Riddle Me Tropolis
by chris dee
Summary: Cat—Tale 51: Edward Nigma has had enough of Gotham, and really, who can blame him?
1. Huge No

**Riddle Me-Tropolis**_  
Chapter 1: Huge No_

* * *

"Puddin says you can never have too much Windex…"

Edward Nigma smiled. He'd never had a lair like this, a rented office suite inside a towering office building. The building had a custodial staff whose services were evidently included in his rent, and the Colombian woman who just left happened to leave this industrial-size bottle of Windex behind on the windowsill, reminding him of Harley Quinn's inane prattle.

"Puddin says you can never have too much Windex…" "Puddin says you have to always give Batsy an extra clonk on the head after he's down, or it won't get through that reinforced cowl of his." "Puddin says Starbucks clerks are bleeders but they sure do make a good cuppa joe."

He was free of them. All of them. He was looking out at a whole new skyline, a whole new city, one with no Joker, no Harley, no Arkham Asylum, no Harvey Dent, no Iceberg Lounge …and best of all, NO BATMAN.

No Bruce Wayne either, A BOUNCY RENEW! Oh, the downward spiral of his life since learning it was Bruce Wayne under that mask. His criminal campaigns had been lackluster at best, until that 70s idea. The Midnight Special, 8-track tapes, Wolfman Jack, platform shoes, there was no end to the clever conundrums he could have devised, each leading to a spectacularly lucrative heist which would have brought him prominent press as well… And what came of it? What do you get when you unleash the most fiendishly clever criminal escape Gotham has seen since the actual 1970s? NOBLER KEGS. The vicious killjoy Bat-brute broke his legs!

Eddie had wound up in the Arkham infirmary before and with far worse injuries, but it was always during Hell Month when the place was packed with other rogues laid up with similar troubles. There was an uplifting all-in-this-together camaraderie. It took teamwork to knock an IV stand over onto Joker's traction rig and jerk his leg just as Bartholomew tripped over the wastebasket, producing the effect that Joker had magically kicked him without making contact… But this time, the only other patient was Harley Quinn. Harley Quinn with "woman troubles" no less, and an endless stream of cheer-up wisdom that all began with the invocation "Puddin says…"

He almost didn't mind the painkillers. And Edward Nigma _ always_ minded painkillers. They dulled the brain, and Eddie was very fond of his brain. It was his best companion when he was holed up at Arkham. As a rule, he would prefer to keep his brain running at full capacity and just suffer the pain—but you couldn't tell them things like that in the Arkham infirmary or they'd think you were crazy! "Patient Nigma may be developing masochistic tendencies. Increase dosage," and his situation is twice as worse as before.

So he said nothing. He drew a crossword on his right cast, intersecting the phrases HUGE NO and UH GONE at every possible crosspoint. On his left cast he inscribed his parting riddle and let the Vicodin dull the lingering aches in his legs (and the babbling brook of "Puddin says" in the next bed) until he could zip through the Fast Track Rehabilitation Program, reaching the crucial Stage 4 on the same day he got his casts removed. At Stage 4, an inmate could be released into the custody of a responsible outsider, and most rogues kept a few homeless people on retainer for the purpose. So it was that, at the very moment Nurse Chin finished cutting off his cast, the papers were already being processed for his release. "George Stubking," so named because he thought he was King George (although Eddie could never determine which one) and had a pet rat called Stubbles, was more than happy to finally earn his 500 by presenting himself as a responsible citizen and signing Edward Nigma's way to freedom.

Eddie and George walked out the door together; Eddie paid him in the parking lot and waited for his cab to arrive. He already knew where he was headed, as Nurse Chin might have deduced from the riddle on his cast if she was smart enough to figure it out. "Where do U go before that which sounds small?"

Ha! She would never figure it out. None of them would. Bats might, perhaps, but none of them would think to show him the remains of Patient Nigma's leg cast. HUGE NO. UH GONE. Where do U go before… It didn't matter; he'd left his parting riddle. He said goodbye whether that goodbye was delivered or not. It didn't matter to him; he was free, free of all of them.

"Where do you go before that which sounds small?" he asked the cabdriver before opening the door. "U-Haul of course. Take me to the nearest U-Haul, my good man, for Edward Nigma has had HUGE NO, UH GONE, _ Enough!_"

The cabbie clicked the meter, and the car pulled out of the parking lot. A day later Edward Nigma arrived in Metropolis.

* * *

Lois walked into the bedroom—and let out a low wolf whistle at the sight of her husband wearing a pair of well-worn bluejeans and bending over as if to touch his toes.

"Ah, the Super-tush," she said dryly. "Funny how that never makes the list of your attributes."

He turned around, blushing profusely.

"I, eh, didn't think I could 'gain weight' in the usual sense," he said, feeling the thighs and sideseams of the jeans. "But these seems pretty _snug_. You don't think they could've shrunk in the dryer, do you?"

"They _could_ have," Lois said patiently. "Or maybe you actually _can_ put on a few pounds. Four trips to Gotham, Clark. And you know how Alfred feeds you."

"I know," he laughed. "He's worse than Ma. And almost as good a cook. But today is the last for a while."

"That's what you said last time," Lois reminded him. "You promised Selina four days of 'super-landscaping' at the Catitat for her taking those tigers off your hands from the Dhumavati death maze, and you've given her four days."

"I know, but today the tigers actually get in. Star Labs is supposed to deliver them before noon, and I just want to look in, make sure everything goes smoothly."

"For someone who supposedly 'can't lie,'" Lois chuckled.

"Okay, I _like_ it out there," he admitted. "Being away from the city, lots of space, good outdoorsy smells. Kind of like home without the crops."

"Aha," Lois smiled, slipping into full reporter-mode. "Like home. That's why you've broken out the jeans you haven't worn since high school?"

"Something like that," Clark smiled.

It did feel more natural to him, wearing jeans to trudge through tall grass and mud. He'd remained in costume while there was "super-landscaping" to be done, but it didn't feel right. Since today's visit was just that, a visit, he decided to dress more comfortably—or at least what he assumed would be "more comfortably." The old jeans were awfully snug.

* * *

Of course there was a hitch. Eddie never even bothered to unpack in the "ideal" lair Toyman had arranged for him. It was a storefront, that much was true. But he was told it was a toy store, an elaborate toy store with large-scale Lego constructions and giant puzzle displays, i.e. something he could sink his teeth into. But once he saw it. It was no more than a Hallmark store: racks of greeting cards, wrapping paper and snow globes. No puzzle potential at all in the show entrance, and the business end of the lair beyond was substandard: there was no powerdrop for a deathtrap, no upper and lower levels for a multi-tiered maze and the living quarters were cramped. The rent Toyman demanded was outrageous, so Eddie stayed only the one night and set out the next day to find something more suitable.

He found an agreeable place to live at Six Corners, a bohemian enclave where two trendy neighborhoods intersected. He knew the concentration of artists would mean plenty of cheap labor to deck out a lair in appropriately eclectic style, and in this neighborhood something like a lime green door bedecked with question marks could hide in plain sight. The only problem was the size of the space he found. It would do for his personal living quarters, but was hardly a base of operations for a criminal of the Riddler's stature.

So he moved in and spent the next few days getting to know his new neighborhood, all the while composing rhymes for "Where" and "Lair" and then, after he got bored with that, listing anagrams for "Where to find a lair?" He was distressed at the number of these that included the word "feline," especially WHAT FELINE I'D ROAR? and WHAT ARDOR I FELINE? Cats had very little to do with his predicament, the riddle of the moment was "Where to find a lair?" He didn't realize at the time that he passed the answer on every corner.

He started each morning with The Daily Planet's crossword. This was his one qualm in coming to this city, the most important feature in their principal newspaper was a laughable insult. Anyone paying that cover price, anyone taking the trouble to pick up a pen and read the clue for 2-Across, surely deserved better than "a six letter word for fish peddler." He found a workaround by the second day: he did the crossword in a mirror. But it still bothered him. What did such a sadly unchallenging puzzle say about the collective intellect of Metropolis? What kind of people accepted being treated like idiots? What kind of people blithely accept such an insult without demanding better?

He filed away those worthy questions as he explored the more prominent Metropolis landmarks. The Museum of Science and Industry was his first stop, the most famous institution of its kind in the world. Eddie was shocked at just how "educational" it was in a few crucial areas: specifically Superman, the power he drew from Earth's yellow sun, and the nullifying effect of radiation from his home star as it exists in various forms of kryptonite. Eddie was no fool, he had researched all of this before setting foot in Metropolis. That is what the Internet was for! But to actually have Superman's hometown museum provide all this information, and in such elaborate, user-friendly displays, with samples of four different kinds of kryptonite right there in the case and photographs of seven other kinds, busloads of schoolchildren filing past reading all about it… It was vaguely… perverse.

The Josh Planetarium was next. Founded in 1930 by renowned Metropolis astronomer, Adler P. Josh, it was the first planetarium in the Western Hemisphere. It too was unabashedly informative about all-things-Superman, providing star maps and holographic dioramas of Krypton and its sun, and reiterating the science museum's lesson (in case you missed it?) about how Earth's yellow sun fuelled most of Superman's powers. A crash course, perhaps, for any villain new to town who hadn't thought to brush up before coming here. They also had a meteor exhibit. No samples this time, but they did have a picture of the kryptonite at the science museum—and a sign informing you that your planetarium admission entitled you to 50 off at the science museum for the next six days.

Eddie decided to pass on the most famous tourist stop: the Skydeck at the LexCorp Towers—the _former_ LexCorp Towers. It was that bitch Talia Head that led him to discovering Batman's identity in the first place. As if that wasn't bad enough, her incompetence wrecked the company. The "LexCorp" Towers, most recognizable image on the Metropolis skyline, were the LexCorp Towers no more, for no such company now existed. Wayne Enterprises had bought up several subsidiaries, and the towers were renamed Mascouten and Miami for the Indian tribes that originally inhabited the region. In Luthor's day, there was no Skydeck open to the public. The Towers were the tallest points in the city, and Lex Luthor alone enjoyed the spectacular views from the very top floors. The top of the East Tower was his office as the CEO of LexCorp, the West his penthouse, and the catwalk connecting them was his private domain for walking from one to the other. Now it was all open to the public. For 11.95, visitors could enter one of Luthor's private elevators and ascend the one hundred and three floors to behold the breathtaking view of Metropolis and fifty miles beyond… Still, however majestic the view, it was Talia, and Wayne, two people Eddie would just as soon forget. He opted instead for the Observation Deck of the Daily Planet building.

He walked in… And _there it was_: DESTINY! Destiny hanging in the bustling atrium lobby:

Who knew?  
When did they know?  
What did they know?  
Who did they tell?  
And why didn't they do anything about it?

Five giant questions. Five giant question marks. Looming—literally _looming—_over the space so that all who entered the building must pass underneath them. It was… beautiful.

Technically it was the cover, front and back, of Clark Kent's bestseller STRANGE BEDFELLOWS: "the book that sparked the end of the Luthor administration." While Eddie could have done without the factoid that it spent "14 weeks on the Gotham Times Bestseller List," the Times was at least one piece of Gotham which had nothing to do with Bruce Wayne or Batman. The inconsequential mention of the city he'd left behind could do nothing to tarnish the beauty of those larger-than-life question marks.

Rather than proceed to the observation deck, he headed for the rental office and learned that yes, there was office space available. Quite a lot in fact. Wayne Enterprises hadn't bought up all of LexCorp, after all. Many divisions and subsidiaries had been shut down completely, leaving entire floors vacant in the former LexCorp Towers. Many longtime tenants of the Planet's had moved to the vacated spaces. The Daily Planet was still considered the most beautiful and significant architectural landmark in Metropolis, but it was built in 1922. Despite four renovations, there was no pretending it could offer the state-of-the-art facilities of the newer towers.

Eddie didn't care. He immediately selected a large suite of offices from the list of available spaces. The excited agent was pleased to tell him that this particular suite had once been occupied by LexCorp when the company was first started. Eddie considered this for a moment before signing on the dotted line. On the one hand, the LexCorp history brought another unpleasant whiff of Talia Head, Bruce Wayne, and all the Gotham dramas he was trying to put behind him. On the other… it rather appealed. To him, Lex Luthor was neither a great entrepreneur nor a disgraced ex-president. He was Superman's great foe. To move right into one of Luthor's former bases in Metropolis seemed to catapult him instantly to the stature a villain of his standing deserved. And those question marks in the lobby did seem like Fate pointing the way. He nodded to himself, picked up the pen, and signed with a flourish.

* * *

Oswald Cobblepot had never been a neat freak. He charged for breakages, that was just good business. But he'd never waddled around his office obsessively straightening all the knickknacks, not before this week. He'd never buffed the fingerprints off his business ledger before—and then his _other_ business ledger—and then the brass handle of the desk drawer where both sets of books were kept. It wasn't concern for the fingerprints as evidence; it was… those smudges, they were driving him kwak-kwak-crazy.

It wasn't like him. Sure, if there were crumbs on his office floor he'd call one of the girls in to sweep up with a dustpan, but now he'd bought a mini-vac to do it himself after they'd left, just to be sure. Kwak! Gina especially didn't do a very good job. And a fastidious bird like himself wanted to be sure. Kwak! While he was at it, he dusted the antique parasols. He'd never dusted before. What kind of a crimeboss dusted? What was going on?

* * *

Bruce was quite aware that his colleagues in the League, and actual friends like Clark—even those who loved him, like Selina and Dick—made the occasional joke at his expense. He could only imagine the hilarity that would ensue if they knew his thought this morning: too happy. How could anyone, even the brooding Batman, have a problem with happy?

Bruce wasn't a sadist. He wanted Selina to be happy. The joy she found in living had brought a light into his life that he never could have imagined. And, of course, she'd been excited about the tigers finally arriving at the Catitat. But that was days ago, and she'd greeted their arrival with… with a _normal_ degree of pleased excitement. When he suggested a quick cruise on the Gatta afterwards, she'd responded with her usual delighted enthusiasm. When he got home last night with the news that he'd captured Killer Croc, she'd greeted him with a normal degree of pleasure and contentment.

This morning, however, she was… entirely too happy.

It started out an ordinary morning. Feline as always in her sleeping habits, she'd lingered in bed when he got up to shower. When he returned, she was gone, along with a pastry and mineral water from her side of the breakfast tray, and her exercise music pulsed discretely from her suite across the hall. He thought nothing of it until he passed the door on his way downstairs and heard her singing along with the music. Singing in the shower, he could understand (he was even coming to terms with her talking to her reflection), but singing while exercising? Bruce had seen her workout; it was everything you would expect from Catwoman, physically demanding to say the least. To waste breath that way trilling along with the Vivaldi was absurd.

When he saw her later, she was arranging flowers in the morning room. He hadn't seen her go near any of the flowers since the Poison Ivy affair, now she was fussing over them like they were the prettiest things she'd ever seen. Then she saw _him_. She greeted him with a moist, passionate kiss—complete with throat purr—that harkened back to their earliest rooftop indiscretions. Then she said she'd asked Alfred to make his double-chocolate cookies _for Clark,_ as "a thank you for the tigers and all his hard work at the Cattitat." And now, now she'd come down to the Batcave, bringing him a plate of those cookies and a cup of tea in a Cat-Tales mug.

"I had Alfred give me a refresher on his special way of making it," she reported with an impossibly pleased grin. "Just to make sure I remembered it all."

Bruce sipped. It was perfect. He had a cookie… He thought about asking why she was in such a good mood, but that seemed… imprudent. A good mood shouldn't require an explanation, and asking for one like it was a cosmic anomaly would just provoke Felinity. He wanted to know, but the only way to find out was to ask her and asking would probably make him a cat-toy for the rest of the day.

Nevertheless… she was singing again… very softly while she rubbed his neck… which felt wonderful… but still… singing… in the Batcave.

* * *

Riddle Me-Tropolis! _That_ was the way to announce the Riddler's arrival in a new city. Since the police here were too backward to provide a convenience like the Batsignal, Eddie decided on a more flamboyant way to lay down the gauntlet with Superman: a full-page ad in the Daily Planet.

The proximity of his lair to the newspaper's nerve center was an unexpected bonus. It made the whole process downright simple: a computer, wires, and time. Within two days, he had infiltrated the DP network and told their sales department that an ad had been purchased by Nonnenum Enterprises. He was especially proud of that touch. Came to him out of the blue as he was typing away in the advertising database. Out of the blue, BUT FLEE OUT HO! That's what comes of a pleasant change in scene. Nonnenum Enterprises. He was out of his Bat-slump! His brain was working again.

Then he went into Accounts Receivable and told them the ad buy had been paid for, clearing that final flag… paid for by Enterprises, Nonnenum, henceforth to be tagged EN, that was even better. Enterprise Nonnenum—how quintessentially Edward Nigma!

* * *

The soft hum of the mini-vac sounded again behind Oswald's office door. Sly took a deep breath before knocking. The hum died away, and Oswald kwaked for him to come in.

"Purchase orders and a couple invoices for your signature, Mr. Cobblepot," he announced, handing over the papers.

Rather than take them at once, Oswald stared malevolently at Sly's shoulder. He held up the mini-vac like a fencing foil, switched it on, and then pointed it dramatically at Sly's torso.

"Hold still," he ordered.

"Uh, Mr. Cobble—"

Too late. Oswald was apparently trying to vacuum something off his breast pocket. Sly backed away, and Oswald followed.

"You have a stain," he announced with all the menace he would have once directed at a hesitant bank teller at umbrellapoint. "Mustard, I think."

Sly looked down. There was a _dot_ of brownish yellow on his shirt. When the mini-vac failed to remove it, Oswald scratched at it with his fingernail. Then he told Sly that he should go home and change before customers arrived.

"Um," was the best reply he could come up with at first. Then he remembered that vodka is a good stain remover and told Oswald he would try that first. Rather than squawk at the waste of precious Iceberg spirits, Oswald kwaked enthusiastically and told Sly to bring some for the armchair when he was through. There was a stain on the upholstery that was making his nose itch—kwak!

Sly reminded him of the purchase orders and handed over the stack of papers with sticky "Sign here" and "Initial here" arrows attached at all the relevant points. Sly watched in bewildered horror as Oswald removed each one and refastened it at a perfect 90-degree angle to the edge of the page.

* * *

"KENT!"

Lois rolled her eyes as Perry White's voice echoed through the DP bullpen. Clark looked at Perry's office door the way a ransomed virgin might approach the dragon's cave, then he gamely went inside. Lois bit her lip. Their editor had never been an easy man to work for, but he was reasonable and fair—until four days ago, when he'd gone to lunch his usual grouch self and come back snarling like a six-headed razor beast from Apokolips.

The door opened and Clark walked out, looking shaken. Lois knew it was an act, but even knowing that Superman had faced the real six-headed razor beast, she found the performance utterly convincing—until he winked as he passed her desk. He knew! Somehow he'd figured it out what was wrong with Perry. That sneak! For 3-1/2 days Lois had poured all her reporter's investigative knowhow into the mystery, and all she got for her trouble was one spectacular ass-chewing and a punishment assignment profiling Morris Kendel, state inspector of water reclamation facilities and quite simply _the most boring man alive! _

Lois marched over to her husband's desk and asked, in her unique tone blending loving wife with piqued professional rival, What? Clark? Knew?

"I'll tell you later," he said mildly, never looking up from his computer screen as his fingers blurred over the keyboard.

Lois stood over him, hands on hips.

"Oh, but I insist," she said, the 'loving' wife in her tone morphing into the 'sleep on the sofa' version.

Clark twisted slowly around in his chair, sliding his glasses an inch down his nose so he could look up at her over the top of the frames.

"I'll tell you later," he repeated.

"Ah," Lois said, and left.

So that was it, she could tell from the eyes. _Clark_ hadn't figured out anything. _Superman_ did. What an unfair advantage he had, as a reporter, with that X-ray vision. He could just scan Perry's appointment book and see where he'd gone that day right before… before… Ha!

So could she! She had no X-ray vision but so could she!

Lois went straight to Jimmy Olsen and said she'd need a diversion—not pulling the fire alarm this time—just get Perry out of his office for ten minutes. She didn't care how as long as it didn't bring any more fire marshalls like last time.

She waited… She heard Perry's phone ring. She heard him squawk "What?" "A paralegal" "A subpoena?" "Assault on a police officer?" "Extradited to Massachusetts for unpaid parking tickets?" and then his office door swung open and he was stalking towards the elevators wondering aloud what Grant had got herself into now.

Lois grinned to herself and slipped into Perry's office, opened his appointment book and… blanched.

He was seeing a doctor?

Lois felt her heart leap into her throat. If Perry had gone to a doctor quite his normal self and come back in this terrible mood, what if there was something really—no. No, Clark had winked. If there was anything really serious wrong with Perry, Clark would never be so impish and playful about knowing. It must be something… hm… Lois scrutinized the desk for some additional clue… and found it in Perry's coffee mug. A thin brown crust on the bottom of his mug—a bone dry crust—meaning there hadn't anything liquid in that mug for at least a day.

Oh god!

The possibility leapt up at her from the crusty coffee-smelling gunk: Did the doctor make him give up caffeine? Newsmen lived on coffee, nicotine, and lust to scoop the other guys. To make someone like Perry White give up caffeine was like asking Jeff Gordon to win a race without gasoline. No wonder he'd modified his trademark "Great Caesar's Ghost" to an exclamation about Caligula's horse that had sent half the news staff rushing to Wikipedia (and then returning to tell the other half that they _really_ didn't want to know).

Lois was especially nice to Perry for the rest of the day, which only made him angry and, before he went home, he suggested she make her Morris Kendel story a two-parter.

That night at dinner, Lois preempted Clark's announcement, telling him she'd already solved the mystery: Perry had been to the doctor, was ordered to give up caffeine, and was into some serious withdrawal.

"Caffeine _and_ cigars," Clark added.

Lois's mouth dropped open, not just at the news but the implication. Clark hadn't scanned Perry's appointment book, he'd scanned _Perry_!

"I didn't mean to snoop," he insisted. "I just happened to notice Perry's blood pressure was down and his body temperature was up, so I took a closer look. All of a sudden he's got normal levels of oxygen in his system and no carbon monoxide. I tried to think why that would be, gave a little sniff, and that grungy soot smell was gone. I hadn't even noticed. So then I took a look around his nasal passages and sure enough, the nerve endings are growing back. Lungs aren't very pink yet, but that'll come and…"

"Stop right there," Lois said, setting down her fork. "I have heard you describe the Super-Eye view of smoking before, remember? And it is not dinner conversation."

"Sorry. You brought it up," he pointed out.

"I thought we were just talking about caffeine," she insisted.

"Ah," he grinned.

* * *

A setback. To be sure, the Daily Planet ad was something of a setback. Eddie had assumed a full-page ad with the words RIDDLE ME-TROPOLIS and nothing more except _a big green question mark_ was self-explanatory! Never, never should one underestimate the collective inanity of a large population.

He was a victim of his own success, that's what it was: He was_ The Riddler._ Question marks were his signature. Green was his color. The whole world knew that! So complete had the associations become that green was now _the_ color for question marks, anybody's question marks. It was _the_ color for riddles, anyone's riddles. And no one realized that HE, the one true Riddler, was the one behind the ad. He was announcing his arrival in Metropolis… and they all thought it was a clue in some global scavenger hunt that Microsoft was holding to promote their new operating system.

It was a setback.

But it was _only_ a setback, Eddie told himself as he sat down to dinner in the famous Oven Grinder restaurant. He was only announcing his arrival in Metropolis, not sending clues heralding a crime. So what did it matter if they misunderstood. He'd get'em next time.

* * *

Bruce closed his eyes, concentrating on the sensation as Selina's thumbs stroked insistently up the back of his neck… A part of him would never really accept this—he was in the Batcave. Granted, it was day, he wasn't in costume and hadn't been working on anything important. He was just cross-referencing a few old log entries on Waylon Jones after last night's Croc encounter, but still. He was in the cave and Selina was… she was making it very hard for Batman to go on with what he'd intended.

"Can I ask you…" he murmured. He hadn't intended to speak, it just slipped out as the neck rub relaxed him. This was wrong. He was always in command in the cave. The way he felt, they should go upstairs. If he couldn't conduct himself as Batman, this really wasn't the place for…

"Ask away," Selina whispered, her breath hot and moist on his ear.

"It just seems like you're in a very good mood today," he said, trying for Batman's gravel. "Singing and everything. I wondered if anything in particular had happened."

"Yep," she said, the seductive tone brushed aside by a merry laugh. "Catwoman robbed a bank."

* * *

The Metropolis Pizza and Oven Grinder Company. The building itself inspired him, situated across the street from a famous gangland shooting in the 20s, it was rumored to have been a lookout post for gangsters in that heyday of Metropolis criminality. There was no Gotham equivalent for a landmark like that. Oh sure, they had a park nearby, with a zoo. They had skyscrapers with great vistas. They had colleges and corporate headquarters. But Gotham didn't go putting up restaurants on the site of notorious gangland massacres. Sure, if a mobster was gunned down in front of a steakhouse, it would go on being a steakhouse. It wouldn't close its doors. But if it was just an ordinary brick house to start with, nobody would think to open a restaurant there once they'd cleaned the blood off the sidewalk. But in Metropolis… How could you not be inspired by a city that had such respect for its criminal history?

Now the food… Eddie had to admit the food looked a little heavy for his taste (pizza pot pie??), but he ordered a salad and set to work finding a worthy target for his first Metropolis escapade. It was disheartening to see just how many tech firms had been swallowed up by LexCorp over the years—and consequently ceased to exist or wound up in Bruce Wayne's hands when the company tanked. The last thing Eddie wanted was a WayneTech target, but there was one shining beacon of non-Waynedom in the Metropolis high tech corridor: S.T.A.R. Labs.

Eddie tapped away on his pocket browser, researching his quarry until his dinner came. Science and Technology Advanced Research or S.T.A.R. Laboratories… Looked like it was their founding mandate that kept them out of Luthor and Wayne's hands. Created by scientist Garrison Slate to operate independently of both government and commercial interests. Well… Good for them. Seemed to have their fingers in everything too, from rockets to software, that was a good sign… But S.T.A.R.'s real claim to fame was their monopoly on Phantom Zone technology. They were the custodians of all equipment, patents, and underlying tech for accessing the alien prison dimension, period.

Hm. That would be worth a pretty penny on its own… Any company _other_ than WayneTech would kill to get their hands on that capability. If they broke the monopoly, there was no telling what else the inter-dimensional portholes could be used for…

Eddie's salad arrived. It would easily feed a family of four. He nibbled.

The Phantom Zone technology was also dangerous enough that he could ransom it back to S.T.A.R.… or to the City… or to Superman himself. Anyone with an interest in keeping the PZ under wraps.

All right then, that left only the devising of a suitable riddle. Phantom Zone. Phantom…

My god, Phantom Zone! The clue wrote itself.

* * *

…to be continued…


	2. Traffic Patterns

**Riddle Me-Tropolis**_  
Chapter 2: Traffic Patterns_

* * *

_Since ancient times, man has looked to the heavens with awe and wonder. A sense of curiosity inspired a quest to comprehend the Moon, Sun, and planets. Throughout history many attempts were made to create models to illustrate the relationship between celestial bodies, but it was Metropolis, "The City of Tomorrow," the city always looking upward, who brought the wonder of the planetarium to the Western Hemisphere.  
In 1923, Dr. Walther Bauersfeld designed an optical projection device that effectively created the illusion of a night sky. Using light produced by an intricate machine at the center of a hemispherical room, he could project images of celestial objects onto the inner surface of a dome. With this innovation the modern planetarium was born. By 1928, renowned Metropolis astronomer _Adler P. Josh_ learned of the mechanism then being demonstrated in Europe and was intrigued enough to personally investigate this instrument. He went to Germany and was so impressed that he began soliciting Metropolis industrialists to finance construction of the first modern planetarium…_

So read the engraved tablet underneath an enormous brass sundial outside the Josh Planetarium.

The personal ad in the Daily Planet merely read: _ Superman, Not Daily, but you have to track them somehow. The source of your own power holds the key. 7 AM precisely. Every second counts. _

Clark did read the newspaper each morning, but he didn't download it into a multi-strata data matrix calibrated to detect keywords and word patterns indicative of theme criminals intending to convey clues, legitimate or otherwise, to authorities, potential targets, or crimefighters. He also didn't read the personals. So even though a clue appeared that morning addressed specifically to Superman, he was unaware that anything had occurred until Perry sent Lois to cover a bomb scare at the planetarium. He made his excuses ("Meeting a source, Perry, gotta fly") and Superman was landing at the planetarium before Lois even reached the expressway.

* * *

Up until the Cat-Tales stage show, only Batman had seen that gleam of daring, mischievous felinity glistening from impossibly green eyes and framed by a delicate cat mask. Then, overnight, there it was on a giant marquee above the Hijinx Playhouse. It was on posters, programs and t-shirts. It was her logo, that extreme close-up cropped just so, clawed fingers at her cheek. It was pure Catwoman: daring, dangerous, unabashed and unashamed…

Those were the eyes Bruce saw now, eyes from the past, daring, dangerous—and silently triumphant, gleaming up at him in miniature from a coffee mug while the voice purred from behind him.

"Catwoman robbed a bank."

He turned, slowly, to face Selina, her eyes just as green and daring without the mask, but more amused than wicked.

"Explain," he graveled, summoning up a bit of the past himself as he stood.

She laughed stridently, and Bruce realized it was just as he'd feared. He'd asked the question: Why was she so happy today? And now he was a cat-toy.

"Catwoman robbed a bank," she repeated distinctly. "Okay, it was in New Zealand and technically it was just a girl in a Catwoman mask," she admitted. "But still, a win is a win."

"You consider that _a win_?" Bruce asked incredulously.

"Absolutely! Don't you see what this means? The Post's bullshit didn't take. Apart from a few gullible morons that probably think that show _Heroes_ is a documentary, the world's view of Catwoman is still just what it should be."

"A thief," Bruce growled.

"Damn right a thief! That girl could've hid her face with any kind of mask from Donald Duck to Chinese opera and she went with _Catwoman_. And what a Catwoman. Paper said she walked in bold as brass, told the teller she had a gun—which was hidden by fabric, she may well have been _bluffing_—then strolled right out into the busy lunchtime crowd and disappeared. 'The police don't know who she is or where she went.' Now that's the kind of Cat-imposter I can stomach."

Bruce shook his head, captivated and yet appalled by that eternal mystery: feline logic. He felt his lip twitch in spite of everything, and wheeled back around to face workstation one.

"If you saw it in the morning paper, it will be in the autodownloads," he said, switching the feed from his monitor to be mirrored on the giant viewscreen. He bypassed the abbreviated reports in the U.S. papers, which just glossed over it as a piece of oddball news, and found a lengthier account in the Taranaki Daily News, where the first bank robbery since 1985 was the big headline of the day.

There was a blurry picture from the bank's security camera, which Bruce began analyzing automatically, the detective's instinct picking at details that might have been overlooked: the way the woman's weight was distributed argued against her having a real gun behind that cloth as she'd claimed, she was holding something but it was lighter, perhaps a prop gun… the drape of her coat concealed her street clothes so she could disappear in traffic as soon as she discarded it… Behind him, Selina was reading over his shoulder—and purring.

"Bank robberies are not as prevalent as they used to be," she quoted from the police statement, "'because our security and processes are very good.' My god they sound just like that Commissioner Forsythe when I got started, remember? And Harvey. God, how they used stick their foot in it: 'A new era in security, impossible for anyone to get in.' Idiots. Why do these guys always assume their setup is foolproof just because their pinhead police mentality can't think of a way to beat it?"

"I don't see any purple in that picture," Bruce noted, hoping to defer further discussion of law enforcement and its limitations.

"Doesn't matter," Selina said smoothly. "Purple isn't the issue here; the important thing is she's robbing a bank."

Bruce crossed his arms, and stewed.

* * *

The A.M. rush "hour" in Metropolis actually begins before 7 and continues until well past 9, often 9:30, or even later. It consists of a seemingly random series of traffic snarls popping up at unpredictable intervals and locations along various critical arteries. Lois was stuck on the Curt Swan, as were a number of school buses and the MPD bomb squad, all headed for the planetarium and all taking the Curt Swan in order to avoid the inevitable delays from accidents on the Joe Shuster. They didn't figure in the construction. The Curt Swan always had construction. The Joe Shuster always had accidents. The Dennis Neville was just plain bad. So there they sat, making what progress they could.

The MPD van had its lights and sirens engaged initially, and that brought movement at first. Lois had followed in its wake as cars pulled to the side, opening a narrow sub-lane. But the construction had blocked off long stretches of burm, and often the cars simply had nowhere to go to get out of the van's way. Then, the siren abruptly stopped, and Lois guessed what had happened. She switched on her police band and confirmed it: the planetarium was no longer considered an emergency situation. Superman had arrived on the scene.

While Lois cursed the story moving on without her, Evelyn Garr, the planetarium's director, was briefing Superman on the bomb scare.

"It all started with Matt and Lou, the facilities guys. They get in earlier than the rest of us, naturally, and it seems they found a small package wedged into the sundial," she prattled.

Superman examined the package. It was the size of a small shoebox, wrapped in green paper and printed with large block letters written in bold, black Sharpee. **PAN THEN ZOOM**, it read.

"Yes, Superman," Evelyn Garr said suddenly.

Superman turned, assuming he was being addressed, but saw Evelyn was talking into her cell phone.

"Board members," she explained apologetically. "Have to keep them apprised of the situation."

Superman pretended not to hear the discussion that followed. Apparently, his arrival had "implications" for the planetarium, and the board members were split as to whether those implications were good or bad. On the one hand, Superman's involvement boosted the institution's standing as a Metropolis landmark, but on the other, the liability issues of meta-powered individuals on site, their insurance rates were bound to go up as it is, and now…

Superman returned his attention to the package, shifting his focus to see through the wrapping and the box itself.

"No sign of any triggers when it's opened," he noted and looked further. "And the contents… It's a camera. An ordinary video camera…" He looked deeper still. "No tape inside. But a working battery… Nothing else. Nothing explosive."

He repeated this in a loud, clear voice, which at least pulled Evelyn's attention away from her conference call. She asked for confirmation, twice, which she then repeated into her phone, both times, and finally she took herself out of the loop and handed Superman the telephone, letting him tell the board members directly.

"No bomb," he assured them confidently. He would have liked to say more. He would have liked to chastise them for fretting about their meta insurance before finding out if a bomb had been left on their doorstep. But he would be just as negligent as the they were if he indulged in a lecture like that when the job was far from done.

"Pan then zoom," he murmured, looking again at the package.

He turned to the horizon, simulating the "zoom" effect for a camera of this size. He turned a full 360 degrees and saw nothing out of the ordinary—except when Lois arrived with six school buses and a police van. Lois had that sour 'scooped again' expression when she saw what was going on, the kids on the busses packed against the windows, all pointing his way, and the senior bomb squad officer (Griffin, good man, good to see him back on duty after the Metallo incident) waved.

Superman checked the horizon again, quickly, on several spectra, and then did a quick scan of the planetarium itself, for safety sake, before giving Evelyn the all clear to open their doors. She looked grimly at the busses, and Superman realized that the staff needed time to prepare for the first morning tours.

He kept the students entertained, getting them to line up outside their busses, asking questions about astronomy, and then lifting the bus of whichever team answered the most questions correctly. Meanwhile, the planetarium staff went about their usual routine prior to opening their doors, and Lois interviewed Officer Griffin about the traffic situation impacting emergency response time…

Well, at least she had a story. But Superman was worried. Before returning to work, he would take the green package to the Fortress for further study.

* * *

Bruce assumed that the "Catwoman bank robbery" would have blown over by lunchtime, but when he went up to the dining room, he found the table laid for one. Alfred said Selina had gone out. He didn't say where, but when she returned, Bruce guessed that she'd driven into the city and stopped at a dozen newsstands. She had a copy of every Gotham newspaper, both legitimate and tabloid. She had taken them into the morning room, stacked them in a neat pile on his mother's desk, and was reading with industrious zeal.

"New Zealand?" he guessed.

"Yes, I'm looking for everybody's…" she trailed off as she read, then folded the paper open to the page and laid it on a second stack.

"Coverage," Bruce said, rather than leave her sentence unfinished. He looked down and saw the same image of the Catwoman robber from the bank's security camera. "I could've easily pulled these for you on the Batcomputer," he noted.

"No," Selina murmured, her eyes scanning the next paper thoughtfully. "What I'm looking for you couldn't find on a digital search." She turned the page and skimmed further before continuing. "It's not just the story, it's where they run it and most importantly…" she turned the page, turned another, and then folded the paper and set it on the stack. Bruce saw it was the Gotham Post. "Most importantly, _who didn't run it at all._ Fifteen papers, Bruce. The Gotham Times, Gazette, Globe, Tattler, Daily News, Village Voice—even the_ Financial Times_ has a _blurb_. You know who doesn't? Just one. Take a wild, flying guess."

"The Post," Bruce said stoically.

"Bing-bing-bing-bing-bing, got it in one," she beamed. "How embarrassing for them. So invested in this crimefighting do-gooder they invented, only to find that nobody's buying it." She purred. Then she laughed. "Of course, the Daily News is having the most fun with it."

"More than you, that's hard to believe," Bruce noted sourly.

"They've been hating the Post for more than fifty years," Selina announced with injured dignity. "I just got started."

Bruce fought to restrain a lip-twitch—and lost.

* * *

Sikela Park? Eddie couldn't believe it, how could he be back in Sikela Park? He got on the 290, eastbound, through the tunnel, on the cloverleaf, off the cloverleaf, three lights, and then home. It _should have been _home. So how did he keep winding up in Sikela Park?

Eddie normally delighted in asking questions, even of total strangers. But the thought of pulling over and asking "How do I get back to Six Corners?" That was not the kind of query he enjoyed.

He'd found the planetarium okay; he'd been there before after all. But he'd been there as a visitor, a paying customer in the middle of the day, amidst a thousand others. Leaving a riddling clue at the crack of dawn was another matter entirely. It required stealth and cunning. You couldn't risk getting stuck in traffic once you'd dropped off a riddle. You couldn't be sitting there in a gridlock, only a half mile from the drop point, when Superman went flying overhead to retrieve your clue, a Gotham license plate reading GAME N ID announcing your identity for all to see.

So, like any villain worth his salt, GAME N ID had taken all the appropriate precautions. He'd researched Metropolis traffic reports for the past five years, charted variations for season, day of the week, and weather conditions. He'd plotted the morning commutes and persistent areas of congestion, and devised a perfectly ingenious departure route where, after leaving his clue, he would eschew all expressways, interstates, and major roads and return home by way of scenic neighborhoods and uncongested side streets.

It should have worked. It _did_ work as far as avoiding the morning gridlock. He just… never quite made it home. There was a street festival in someplace called Greektown, and the road was blocked off. It should have been easy enough to drive around it, but somehow he always came out facing west instead of north.

There was certainly a riddle in it, but this too was not the kind of riddle he enjoyed. "Why can't I get out of Greektown facing north?"

He thought about going back to the planetarium and risking the route home that he'd used the last time. He _knew_ that worked—but, by now, Superman would have the camera right in the palm of his super-hand. He would have it held up to his super-eye and pointed at the 7 o'clock position on the sundial. He would be reading a number on the lens that he might or might not realize was the proper distance to pan before zooming in… on a decoy! PAN THEN ZOOM, Superman. PAN THEN ZOOM. For the ad said the source of your power holds the _key_, not the _clue_. The sundial held only a clue. The source of your power is what? The sun, yes, of course, but the sun is also a star, as in S.T.A.R. Labs! And what kind of key does S.T.A.R. Labs possess? The key to open the Phantom Zone!

What genius! What vintage Riddler. Never had Batman spurred him to such puzzling feats as this! Never! He should have made this move years ago. Years ago!

Sigh.

But the fact remained, Superman had the camera in his hands even now, and it would be folly to return to the planetarium.

So he returned to the Greektown festival and had a gyro. By then, the morning traffic had cleared, and it was safe to use the expressways again without getting trapped… except, somehow, he kept winding up in Sikela Park!

* * *

Clark tucked the phone between his ear and shoulder, freeing his hand to massage his brow without disturbing his glasses.

"Y-yes, Selina, I agree it's technically news if it was run in fourteen out of fifteen Gotham newspapers. I'm not really sure why the Planet didn't run the story. If I had to guess, I'd say it's because it's in New Zealand. That doesn't really affect the people of Metropolis and they can't affect it, so… Well yes, that applies to Gotham too, but I imagine they ran it for the Catwoman angle. Catwoman does live there… Yes of course, I mean _you_ live there. I know you're 'out of the closet' that wa—And, you don't refer to yourself in the third person, right, I do know that. I was just… Mhm… Mhm… On the Internet too… Yahoo news… And Google… And the bloggers. Okay, well yes, I agree, that does go beyond the scope of Catwoman's hometown newpap—your hometown newspaper that is, I just… Yes… Well the thing is, Selina, if it's already in it today's papers, that sort of makes it 'yesterday's news,' if you know what I mean. But I'll keep an eye on the newswires, and if there are any future developments, you can be sure we'll… Well, I don't know, when they catch her I suppose… Or if she strikes again, sure… "

He picked up a pen and made a note.

"…It's far more likely that she would be captured, in my opinion, most criminals are even if… Yes, I do remember that incident with LexCorp. Very clearly. I've been trying to forget it for years… Well that was a special case. Most criminals that come into Metropolis and challenge Superman on his own turf get caught and _stay caught_… He's never 'dropped' anyone else, Selina. It was just that one time when… Yes, I know the Daily Planet never reported what really happened but the fact is… Yes, I know, Catwoman startled him—I mean you startled him and he let go and dropped her right into—mhm yes—Well, as a representative of the Daily Planet, I can only say that we report what we see with our own eyes and what the principals tell us about what occurred. And if Catwoman did get Superman to drop her by unexpectedly _ kissing_ him, out of the blue, without any kind of ramp up or advance warning and _in full view of Batman,_ and then told him that he kissed like a farmboy, then he never passed that information along to a reporter from the Daily Planet, so we never reported it. But I can promise you, Selina, that I will personally keep an eye on the situation in New Zealand, and make sure their 'Catwoman' gets all the attention she deserves. Please tell Alfred how much Lois enjoyed the cookies," he concluded politely.

Clark hung up and read over his notes on the call, underlining the last words emphatically. Then he checked his watch. Lois _ had_ enjoyed the cookies and was now upstairs in the Planet's Fitness Center 'paying for her sins' as she put it. Clark himself hadn't touched the cookies, considering the inches he'd already gained thanks to Alfred's culinary genius. He had promised to meet Lois so they could walk the treadmills together… He checked his watch again.

He had another twenty minutes for his lunch break. The treadmill really wouldn't do him any good, it was just the spirit of the thing, working out together. To get any actual benefit, he'd have to exert himself. And he just had time for a quick flight to New Zealand.

"Perry, going out, got a lead to check," he announced too softly to be heard outside his cubicle.

He put on his jacket and left, leaving his notepad behind.

* * *

Winslow Schott and Oswald Loomis, known to the world as Toyman and Prankster. They weren't Eddie's idea of drinking buddies. They didn't exactly conform to his idea of supervillains either, although each had achieved feats of gadgetry that he could admire. But true rogues or not, they were both experienced in the finer points of Metropolis navigation, and that was certainly worth an hour of his time. He didn't want his assault on S.T.A.R. Labs to land him in another devil's triangle like the planetarium/Greektown/Sikela Park debacle.

So he'd called Schott and Loomis and proposed getting together for a beer. In Gotham, of course he would have brought them to the Iceberg. Here in Metropolis, he hadn't found any neighborhood haunts yet, so he left the meeting place up to them.

"It's your town," he said. "Where is good?"

There was a noise on the line, a kind of breathy gasp followed by excited chattering back and forth between them that reminded Eddie of Richard Flay.

..:Smoking Cat:.. Loomis announced finally.

"Come again?" Eddie squeaked.

..: The Smoking Cat. Great place, live music, no extra charge. Nice and close for you. In Sikela Park.:..

"Oh hell," Eddie growled after he'd hung up. He wasn't sure what nettled him more, the prospect of going back to Sikela Park or the way Selina had popped into his mind at the words Smoking Cat? Nevertheless, this was business. There were important riddles to solve: What are the particular CAT RIFF – argh – _traffic_, what are the particular _traffic_ pitfalls of Metropolis? And how do you bypass them without being able to fly?

So he was off to the Smoking Cat. 'Live music' sounded like it was a nightclub, and Eddie expected somewhere dark and discreet. If there was an openly rogue-friendly haunt like the Iceberg in Metropolis, Eddie figured he would have heard of it. So this was a discreet nightclub, and he'd dressed prudently, foregoing the green and the bowler, and even his question mark tie clip, and holding his cane in such a way as to hide the question mark handle…

* * *

Everyone knew there were two parts to the Iceberg Lounge. Like its namesake, there was the fraction visible above the surface, Oswald Cobblepot's nightclub which everyone knew, and there was a murky unknown beneath the surface, the Penguin's criminal operations, the exact size and shape of which were anybody's guess. The two sides seldom mixed. Oswald allowed his criminal employees to enter the club as customers but he didn't encourage it. When they did come in for a drink, staff of the legitimate operation would wait on them but would have no way of knowing they all worked for the same man. Usually. But today, Talon and Crow were making a delivery to Oswald's office. The bar wasn't open for business yet, but since Sly was right there, they saw no harm in asking for a beer. Sly agreed, mostly because he was curious about the four long boxes he'd seen them carry into Oswald's office. He didn't charge them for the drinks, he just asked about their delivery.

"Ever hear of the Ionic Breeze?" Talon asked.

"Is that like a global warming thing?" Sly asked in return. Poison Ivy often lectured the bar about some environmental thing or other, and he'd learned to tune it out.

Talon shook his head and took a slip out of his pocket.

"Reduces bacteria, mold spores and viruses in the air, using… elec-tro-static fields and germ-killing UV-C light," he read laboriously.

"Air purifier," Crow explained. "They got'em at Sharper Image."

"_Had_ them," Talon corrected.

"Oh hush," Crow said. It was only Sly, but he didn't like advertising the fact that they'd just hijacked a truckload of air purifiers at Oswald's request.

"Oh yeah, I've hearda those," Sly said vaguely. "Four of them?"

"And eight more upstairs where he lives," Crow mentioned.

"Ho boy," was all Sly could think to say.

* * *

The Smoking Cat was not what Eddie expected. It wasn't a nightclub; it was a barbecue joint. And despite the lack of a question mark tie clip, he was overdressed. It also wasn't especially discreet. A dozen outdoor tables with umbrellas arranged on an open courtyard facing the sidewalk, it looked like a place to see and be seen. Eddie went inside, and saw that Schott and Loomis already had a table—as well as an _enormous_ platter of food. Heaps of pulled meat topped with a massive slab of ribs. What was with these people? Did they need a layer of fat to make it through the winter?

Eddie greeted them both (putting aside the fact that he'd invited them out for a beer, not _dinner_) and then came the pleasantries without which he would not find out about Metropolis traffic problems. During this ritual, Winslow Schott inquired after Gotham, Arkham, and Joker—and suggested Eddie try the 'pulled meat nachos.' Oswald Loomis inquired about Batman, Blackgate, and Poison Ivy—and suggested Eddie order the chili and "try it loaded" as the menu advised. Eddie said that Gotham was cold, Arkham was crowded, and Joker said hello. Batman never changed, Blackgate had an escape a few months back, and Poison Ivy was not a natural redhead. Then he ordered a salad—and ignored the waiter's helpful suggestion that he could "add pulled meat to that salad for only 3 more." Then, at last, he could ask about the traffic.

At least, he _thought_ he'd asked about the traffic. It was a simple enough question and he hadn't indulged in any double meanings or anagrams, but the answers he was getting made no sense.

"The biggest menace is the Yarbrough Strangler," Loomis said, but Schott thought it was far worse to be caught in "Roussos's Cave." Then followed an involved argument about the relative deadliness of two chaps called Stan Kaye and Mort Weisinger (who certainly didn't _sound_ like supervillains?) but ending in the vehement agreement that "Dennis Neville is death."

"Perhaps we should begin again," Eddie said gamely, "I'm not looking for any henchmen or prospective team-ups. I just want to know if it's safe to take the 220 out to S.T.A.R. Labs after six?"

Loomis and Schott looked at each other, paused, and broke into peals of merry laughter.

Eddie fumed.

"Something funny?" he growled—momentarily frightening himself, he sounded so much like Batman in the delivery.

"Edward, you Gothamite Silly! That's what we've been telling you!" Loomis exclaimed before breaking off into another aria of tittering laughter.

"First of all, it's not 'the 220;' it's the Curt Swan Expressway. No one ever uses those interstate numbers. Why do you think they give the roads those names?"

Eddie sighed, piqued that someone was now asking _him_ a question, but thankful that these giggly ingrates were finally making some sense. The chorus of explanations now came at him in a stream.

"The Yarbrough Strangler is on the Curt Swan near the exit to Yarbrough where two lanes merge down to one for a mile and a half and then open up into three." "Rousso's Cave is part of the tunnel where Rousso Street goes over the Joe Shuster." "Mort Weisinger is an absolute bitch when it's raining." "Stan Kaye gets all the stadium traffic, never go near it on game day…"

* * *

Since the first weeks training the first Robin, Batman said self-deception is a luxury that no crimefighter can afford. Since his first week of Freshman Psych, Dick said that Bruce was kidding himself if he thought he lived up to that high standard where Catwoman was concerned. From day one, she got to him in ways he didn't like to admit, and from day five or six, he'd poured that denial into Zogger.

One of the nine steam-powered fists that drove Zogger's Level 3 attack jutted itself into Bruce's jaw.

It had been some time since he'd acknowledged the truth of Dick's words. It had been—he blocked the next punch and disarmed the thrusting joint—it had been some time since he admitted his feelings for Selina. It had been some time since Catwoman drove him to an aggravated bout with the Strategic Self-Mutating Defense Regimen that Dick had dubbed "Zogger"—he blocked another punch, and kicked the #5 arm into #6, preempting the next two attacks…

But it had been even longer since he really worried what Catwoman might do next.

He leapt and tossed a batarang at the control console, snapping the attack lever into the idle position as he landed off the assault grid and grabbed a waiting towel. He tore off his cowl and mopped the perspiration from his face.

She'd enjoyed her moment of notoriety once removed, okay. It didn't reflect his values, but he could certainly follow the logic: She missed her old life from time to time, she made no secret of that. The inevitable nostalgia was exacerbated by the Post misrepresenting her to the world as something completely antithetical to the true Catwoman and inferior in every way. Now there was a Catwoman in the press that she could feel good about. It wasn't her; it wasn't pretending to be her; it was some small-time nobody on the far side of the world, probably striking out in sheer desperation. But in choosing that visage to commit her crime, she had given the creator of the original persona a much-needed moment of validation. It _ didn't_ reflect Bruce's values, but by god, he could understand it. Anyone could.

It wasn't Selina's satisfaction that worried him but the Post's discomfiture. Their silence was telling. Every other paper had cracked a smile, even the stodgy, conservative ones. The Post ignored it entirely, presumably for the same reason Selina rejoiced: the public image of Catwoman still resembled the real thing more than their sorry reinvention.

The worry there was two-fold. The Post _might_ react spitefully, as they had with that pregnancy nonsense, subjecting their faux-Catwoman to even greater indignities. Selina would be upset, and nothing good could come of that. It was a possibility, but a remote one. It was not enough to send him to Zogger.

No, the real worry was Selina herself.

"They didn't report it at all," she'd said. "Makes you wonder just how far they can take it?"

The gleam in her eye. He knew that gleam. It meant the cat was sharpening her claws—and looking forward to the taste of fresh mouse.

"What do you mean?" he'd asked.

"I mean you can't bury your head too far in the sand for too long or you'll suffocate. How far would they go? Dinky little bank job on the far side of the globe, that they can ignore, fine. But what if it was a real cat crime and closer to home? What if, just for the sake of conversation, Catwoman emptied out the Egyptian wing at the museum tomorrow night? Are they going to ignore that _too_? What if they really were stuck with a story too big and inescapable to not report, one that absolutely contradicted their crimefighting gogglewhore?"

The seconds that followed are what sent Bruce into three levels of Zogger. He'd stood there. As he thought back on it now, it felt like those moments after "Why Batman, how hard do you want it to get?" He simply _ stood_ there, trying to process something so far from what was expected that he simply could not get his brain and his mouth working together to fashion any kind of rational response.

She couldn't really be talking about stealing again. It wasn't possible. Was it? Even if she was thinking about it (which she couldn't be), she wouldn't just sit there casually talking about it. Not with him. He was Batman. She did know that. They were long past the point where her criminal past was even an issue, but even if they weren't (and they were), even if it was somehow possible that she was considering throwing both their lives away (which it wasn't), you don't just walk up to _Batman_ and announce that you're going to_ commit a crime_. The only criminals who did that were uniformly crazy, and Selina was not now, nor had she ever been, insane.

He, on the other hand, might just be losing his mind.

No, it was _not_ possible that Selina was talking seriously about stealing again. He knew that.

No, it was not possible that she was even _thinking_ about it. He knew that too.

And yes, they _absolutely_ were _long past_ the point where _any_ thought of her criminal past was an issue. He knew all of this…

So why did his mind and body lock up like "the easy way or the hard way" "Why Batman, how hard do you want it to get?"

* * *

Like most high tech facilities, S.T.A.R. Labs was laid out in concentric rings with increasingly restricted access, protected by increasingly stringent security. Riddler had no difficulty penetrating the first two. One guard to evade, one motion detector, and a few locked doors. Then he waited, between the employee cafeteria and a bank of offices, and checked the relays on the decoy target.

If Superman had understood the markings inside the camera lens, he would have panned four degrees, four minutes, and four seconds to the right from the 7 o'clock line on the sundial, and then zoomed to see the giant Ferris Wheel at Navy Pier. Once he understood this to be the target, he would only have to wait until sundown to perceive the subtle spectral shift on certain lightbulbs. A red and yellow glow that only he could see, produced by a special coating on alternating bulbs, pointing him to a specific gondola. Perhaps he would even recognize the allusion to the yellow and red stars of Earth and Krypton. After all, the clue did say that the source of Superman's power held the key, and a good clue should have layers of meaning. After the sundial, who was to say Riddler was finished alluding to stars? The real question was if Superman would fly to the red gondola or the yellow one. Either way, he would find himself trapped with a wash of red radiation, the kind used to produce man-made kryptonite. It might not be as deadly, but it would certainly be unpleasant.

That was assuming he fell for it. Eddie had checked the remote sensors every twenty minutes since sunset, and each time he found neither trap had been sprung. His hopes began to soar. Was it possible? _Did Superman realize the camera was a decoy?_ Did he connect the planetarium and the "source of his power" phrase with S.T.A.R. and see that PAN THEN ZOOM was an anagram for Phantom Zone? Why, it was too good to be true! Superman would be here waiting after all, waiting to foil his plan! Eddie hadn't dared to hope. In Gotham, certainly, that would have been his Plan A. But for his first job in a new city, one with dubious rumors about the resident cape's intellect, it was folly to predicate _Plan A_ on the good guys figuring out where he was and showing up while he was still there.

So he'd made that Plan B. But now, now if Superman was coming, that meant he could scrap the dreary, boring Plan A and go on to A FREER ED A-WHISTLING ALL THE TORN MOON—not dealing with morons here after all—Plan B! It would be infinitely easier to get into the high security core of the facility that way. He had a fool proof means to trick Superman into opening an access point for him, but he never dreamed he would actually get a chance to use it.

So he waited…

…and pondered how easily one can get into a rut. Why had he assumed Batman was the only hero fit to match wits with his own?

He waited…

…and considered again that he should have left Gotham long ago. What really kept him there?

He waited…

…and reluctantly checked the Ferris Wheel relays again…

He waited…

Was it possible that Superman wasn't coming _and_ that he didn't even figure out the decoy?

No, no that couldn't be. He couldn't possibly be that thick. "Pan then zoom," it's a camera, COME ON!

Eddie angrily put away his k-metal laser and moved back to Plan A, vowing to leave a simpler puzzle next time. He picked a lock to the administrative office and searched for a keycard…

Instead, he found a researcher working late. He promptly gassed the fellow without bothering to construct a riddle for "gas bulb." He was too angry. Even Robin would have got to the Ferris wheel. And Batman would have figured out S.T.A.R. Labs just on the Daily Planet ad alone. And _Sly_ would have known PAN THEN ZOOM was an anagram.

Eddie searched the office, but instead of a keycard he found… Selina? What was Selina's name doing there? He picked up the Post-it which posed a more challenging conundrum than any he'd devised so far (Sly _ and Raven_ would have realized PAN THEN ZOOM was an anagram). Eddie looked through the papers where the Post-it was attached and found photographs and health profiles for Bengal tigers, all marked with a contact notation for Selina Kyle at Wayne Manor, Gotham City…

Eddie took a long, deliberate breath. He felt he was about ten seconds away from what Dr. Bartholomew would call "an episode." Not unlike the one where he recalled how his older brother 'forgot to tell him' he had lost the Colonel Mustard card, and Little Eddie had sworn up and down that he'd found the killer but turned out to be wrong.

"You never forget your first wrong answer," he told the unconscious researcher. "Those were hard days, with hard lessons. Like 'You can't out-think a dodge ball' and 'The wedgie knows no GPA.' Bet you remember that one, eh, Poindexter?"

"Poindexter" obviously had no reply, so Eddie continued to ransack the office, desperate to wrench something of value from the break in. He searched. He searched. But the only data in the room of value to an arch-criminal was the name and contact information for a woman billionaire Bruce Wayne was shacking up with, AND HE ALREADY KNEW THAT! NOT THAT HE COULD GO AROUND KIDNAPPING SELINA! SHE'D KICK HIS ASS FOR ONE THING! THEN BRUCE WOULD BREAK HIS LEGS AND SHE'D KICK HIS ASS AGAIN! THEY'D FEED HIS BROKEN BODY TO THE TIGERS AND GO OUT FOR A PIZZA! A REAL PIZZA, GOTHAM STYLE, THIN CRUST, NO KNIFE AND FORK…

* * *

…to be continued…


	3. Dumbing Down, Ramping Up

**Riddle Me-Tropolis**_  
Chapter 3: Dumbing Down, Ramping Up_

* * *

Metropolis. It had been "The City of Tomorrow" since 1933 when it hosted a World's Fair celebrating science and technological innovation. Before that, it was "The City Always Looking Upward" because, in the late 19th century, it gave rise to the first skyscraper and only a few scant years later, the first Ferris Wheel. The wheel was built for the previous World's Fair in 1893 and designed to rival the centerpiece of the fair in Paris, the largest structure in the world at the time, known as the Eiffel Tower. Metropolis had bested Gotham, Keystone, and Washington D.C. for the right to host the international exposition, and the honor had a profound effect on the city's architecture and self image. The City Always Looking Upward became a powerful metaphor, the Metropolis Ferris Wheel, and indeed the city itself, became towering symbols of American optimism.

It was the current Metropolis Ferris Wheel, the descendent of that first landmark of the 1893 Exhibition, which now witnessed an exhibition of a very different kind—one decidedly lacking in optimism. At 3 a.m., the Riddler returned to dismantle the deathtraps he'd set up with such care in the #7 and #8 gondolas. He cursed in anagrams as he pulled alpha emitters from their innocent-seeming camouflage. He cursed in iambic pentameter as he strapped inert gamma pods to his belt, and he cursed cats and capes as he loaded reflector pellets into his backpack. Then he left, groaning pitifully from the cumulative weight of the gear, which hadn't seemed nearly as heavy when he'd installed it.

Eddie couldn't help but feel that the City of Metropolis had let him down. He'd been inspired by his new surroundings, inspired by the stature of their great hero. He'd given Superman his best, the highest compliment a mind like the Riddler's had to give. And this—this was what he got for his trouble? A bad back?

* * *

Bruce Wayne, like most men of science and like most men of ability, did not believe in luck, fate, curses, signs or portents. This in itself was lucky or there was no telling what he might make of Selina listening to _La Donna e Mobile_ when he found her in her suite. The aria was sung on their first "date" and they'd talked about it on the roof of the opera house that night, but only later did the full meaning of the words sink in:

_Woman is fickle, fickle like the wind,  
she changes the tone of her voice and her thoughts  
and her thoughts, and her thoughts!  
Always a sweet, pretty face,  
in tears or in laughter, she is always lying  
He is always miserable who trusts in her  
who to her confides, his unwary heart!_

"You do realize the guy singing is the biggest prick in the entire opera," Bruce quoted, remembering her comments that night.

Selina looked at him, stunned and slightly horrified, but when she spoke, it was clear her reaction had nothing to do with his comment.

"What happened there?" she asked, pointing to his swollen jaw. If it was morning, she would naturally have assumed that Batman tangled with a gang of chain-wielding bruisers on the docks the night before. But she'd just seen him an hour ago and his jaw was fine. He had no Batman injuries of any kind. What did he do, run into a squad of ninjas in the hallway?

"Oh that," Bruce said, rubbing the jaw lightly. "Training mishap."

"You're so cute when you lie. You don't have 'mishaps' fighting an army of DEMON minions, even when they're fresh out of their training camp and you've been chained in a dungeon for a day and a half. Now you're telling me that you let a boxing glove on a stick sneak up on you?"

"It happens," he grunted. "Not often, but it happens. I upgraded the targeting matrix and assault logarithms last week and—"

"Pfft."

"…Never mind. I… I just wanted to let you know that I'm heading into town early tonight. I have some work to do in the satellite cave, so you should suit up now if you want to ride in together."

Selina cocked her head, endearingly confused by the offer.

"If you give me a ride into town, I expect a ride home," she purred.

"Agreed. Meet on the Moxton building at four."

Selina was still confused, but she nodded her agreement.

"You're not…" she began suddenly, then trailed off as the tenor reiterated his distrust of the fair sex and she realized Bruce had already gone.

"Never mind," she sighed.

* * *

This time, the personals ad would read simply: _Superman, one doesn't like to be cliché, but since it's Daily Planet Day._

Eddie hated the idea of "dumbing down" a riddle. It was an affront to the intellect. It degraded hero and villain alike. It was _unworthy_ of Edward Nigma. So that morning, as he stored away 120 pounds of unused deathtrap for the next time and took an aspirin for his aching back, Eddie decided he would _not_ dumb it down. He would rise above the limitations imposed by a city which, through no fault of its own, had its mental faculties blunted by years of 4-Down asking for an 8-letter word for ice formations. There was no reason to be defeated by this; he would simply have to educate them. Start slow and build them up. The Phantom Zone was too exotic for a first foray with a new foe, that's where he went wrong. He should begin with something familiar…

Of course, the target was only half the problem. That was _the answer_. There was still the delicate matter of phrasing the question. It was the clue delivery system itself he had to consider. He was The Riddler, yet would have to somehow reframe his signature conundrums in a way any flying nitwit could understand.

While he pondered these problems, he decided to decorate his lair at the Daily Planet to make a proper impression when the time came for Superman to discover it. With the building-supplied custodial service, Eddie knew he could not go as far as he might in Gotham. But he'd befriend Anita, the large woman who showed up every evening to empty the wastebaskets and vacuum the floors. In the guise of being friendly and personable, he told her that he published a number of games-related magazines. He was thinking of computer games and word puzzles, but his Spanish was spotty and she seemed to think he meant slot machines and lottery tickets. But that didn't matter, whether she thought his business was games or gaming, Eddie was now free to indulge in a few oversized props and decorations without raising suspicions. There was nothing like hanging a giant tangram on the wall to clear the mind, setting the stage for a sudden spark of inspiration—and in this case, there was nothing like taking a half-minute to chat with the cleaning woman either. For Anita supplied the crucial spark herself. She said she was taking her son to the Meteors game on Saturday. It was Daily Planet Day, and the paper was giving away tickets to anyone who worked in the building.

* * *

Everyone thought about it their first week working at the Iceberg: Joe Pesci getting whacked in _ Goodfellas_. Guy's just walking along, not a care in the world, steps into a backroom, and in the split second it takes to notice that things are not what they should be—BLAM!—brains blown across the floor.

The old-timers like Sly and Raven hadn't thought about that for years. But Sly had a horrifying flashback when he came into work that morning. He'd unlocked the 'Berg itself, collected the mail, and saw the new Fodor's guide was in. There was a cover letter from the publisher informing Mr. Cobblepot of an expanded listing for the Iceberg Lounge, highlighting it as a Must-See for the adventuresome Gotham tourist.

Excited by the news, Sly had run up the stairs to Oswald's flat above the nightclub, opened the door, and—BLAM!—In the split second it takes to notice things are not what they should be, he flashed on Joe Pesci's brains getting blown across the room while his own brain registered the sight his eyes were showing him: Oswald Cobblepot was not wearing pants!

* * *

Siegel Field. With the fall of LexCorp, the former LexAir Stadium had reverted to its original name, the name true Metropolans had never stopped using, the name painted on the original hand-operated scoreboard which had never been changed—despite Lex Luthor's vehement lobbying. It was one of the few public relations battles Luthor had lost with the people of Metropolis. Even at the height of his political and economic domination of the city, he could not convince them to deface that beloved landmark. There was an electronic board installed beneath it in the late 80s and that, of course, had been quickly altered to reflect the new name. In addition, LexCorp installed 90-foot video screens around the stadium, and these too were emblazoned with the LexAir name on every open surface. These vulgar displays had recently been replaced with newer video screens, courtesy of WayneTech, and of course, the new screens displayed the original Siegel name with respect, but considerably more restraint.

It was Daily Planet Day at Siegel Field. No one considered the Metropolis Meteors vs the Keystone Coyotes to be a clash of titans, but it was Daily Planet Day. That was a good enough reason for Clark and Jimmy to attend the game. Lois said she enjoyed cheap beer as much as the next woman, but it was impossible for her to join them. Perry had made good on his threat to run her two-part profile of Morris Kendel, water reclamation inspector for the tri-state area. He was running it this very weekend (Part I, Saturday; Part II, Sunday—Oh the Humanity!), and Morris was throwing a party to celebrate. He'd invited Lois as the guest of honor and, rather than be subjected to whatever hoedown someone like Morris Kendel might throw to celebrate his fifteen minutes of fame, Lois told him she was covering a border skirmish in Uzbekistan. Ergo, she could not risk being pictured in the inevitable photo spread the sports section would run on Sunday: all the Daily Planet celebs at Siegel Field on Daily Planet Day. What's more, she had to find out where Uzbekistan was, who was on their borders, and why they might be fighting with them.

So it was just Clark and Jimmy in the DP box at the bottom of the fifth. Perry had gone "for a hotdog" again, but really he'd just gone to pace. He found it impossible to sit still, and everyone around him found it impossible to not fantasize about him being killed by an errant flyball. So he'd go "for a smoke" and then remembering that was no longer possible, he'd say he was going for a hotdog. As he left, the electronic scoreboard and video screens sprang to life as they always did at the end of an inning. But this time, instead of the usual player stats or close-ups of people in the crowd, a gleaming Superman emblem appeared on each of the video screens. Then a blur of red and blue color zipped from one screen to the next, as if the Man of Steel was flying around the stadium faster than the eye could see. Finally, after several revolutions, the colored blur seemed to collide with the electronic scoreboard. After an animated dot-matrix cartoon resembling a meteor's (or perhaps Superman's) impact at the very center of the scoreboard, the following words were displayed:

My first is the first, letter that is.  
My second means you owe a debt  
that your debtor is sure to collect.  
My third is 3/4 sold.  
And my whole?

The last line of the riddle blinked on and off three times while the opening lines remained constant. Then all but the first line blacked out, so the screen read simply "My first is the first, letter that is" and the enormous video screens sprang to life again, all displaying the same image: a giant letter **A**.

After a moment, the next lines of the riddle returned on the electronic scoreboard. "My second means you owe a debt that your debtor is sure to collect." On the projection screens, **LIEN** faded in beside the A. "My third is 3/4 sold" the electronic board added. **SOL**, the projection screens answered.

"And my whole?" the electronic board blinked again. **ALIEN SOL**, the projection screens blinked back.

* * *

Innovation. Any rogue worthy of the name had to challenge himself now and then. Scarecrow had been pleased with this effort, varying the formula while still maintaining those signature elements which defined him. The radio giveaway was carefully rigged to select only Hudson University students as winners. This afternoon, each "winner" had received their prize, a new iPod tricked out with the new contact version of his fear toxin carefully applied to the headphones. The plastic coating would have melted at body temperature, releasing the drug into their systems and priming them for the time-release trigger set to go off at midnight.

He'd been gratified to hear the first screams from the Isaacson dorm, but then nothing. He'd selected his location to enjoy the full range of terrors bursting forth around the campus, but the only screams he heard were from that one building. He was certain the targeted students were scattered throughout all the dorms and fraternity houses. As he approached Isaacson to enjoy what he could of the limited fright (and possibly discover what had gone wrong with the others), he felt a tap on his right shoulder. It was a familiar and menacing tap, and Scarecrow turned to see the expected blackness in the shadows right before a gloved fist shot from the darkness and thrust him with agonizing force into the brick wall behind him. His legs crumpled, his vision blurred, and his head swam as he found himself staring at the fuzzy outline of a Bat-boot, while above him, he heard a door open.

"I said not to open the door," the terrifying Bat-voice graveled.

"It sounded like a knock," a squeaky, gutless co-ed answered.

"It wasn't. It was him."

The boot nestled under his armpit and flipped him over, and Jonathan Crane found himself looking up at two blurs: A black one with points on top and a blonde one in a Hudson U sweatshirt. He focused on the seal on the blonde blur's shirt, trying to force it into sharper focus, while Batman told the students of Isaacson Hall that they could stop screaming, the ruse had worked.

Innovation, there was a delicate balance involved, maintaining those signature elements which defined him, but varying the formula enough so as not to be… Scarecrow winced as he heard the click of the Batcuffs behind his back… predictable.

* * *

ALIEN SOL. As a challenge, it was plain enough. How often had Luthor addressed Superman sneeringly as "the alien" and how many villains since had taken up the call? He was the Alien; Sol was the Latin word for sun. Either an enemy was going to come at him, the alien, through an attack on his power source, the sun, somehow depriving him of its benefits, or else "alien sun" was itself the nature of the attack, for even minute amounts of radiation from Krypton's sun could cripple Superman's abilities.

Superman had experienced both forms of assault in the past and was confident he could defeat either if he knew the attack was coming. He paid a quick visit to the Fortress to set up a few simple precautions. If he didn't re-initialize the automated system every six hours, it would notify Bruce and the Watchtower of a Sigma alert and file a story in Clark Kent's name from Dallas, Texas. He set up flight squares on specific rooftops, with lead shielding and reflectors, where he could escape from most beam weapons. He took a quick buzz around the sun too, super-charging the solar battery of his body and searching for any kind of anomaly. He also checked the nearest asteroids, planets, and their moons capable of launching an assault on the sun.

Meanwhile, the Riddler sat in the bowels of an improvised hideout within Met-STAR Press, eating Chinese takeout with Lois Lane. He apologized again for the awkwardness; dim sum wasn't the easiest thing to eat one-handed. But he was sure she would agree that he'd been more than reasonable, untying her one hand and removing the gag so she could eat.

"The truth is, I never planned on feeding you," he explained, as if embarrassed by a social lapse. "I expected we'd all be done with this hours ago. Does he always take this long to show? Must be very tiresome for you."

Lois inspected a fried dumpling and then regarded the Riddler with equal suspicion. She was the most kidnapped human being on the planet, but even for her, this was a very peculiar situation. She scrutinized the dumpling again, and then the Riddler. On the one hand, she could refuse all food (and the bizarre attempt at conversation) and risk offending her abductor, possibly triggering a violent outburst which might or might not draw Superman's attention. On the other hand, she could risk the dumpling in the interests of humoring the Riddler, and draw him out, which would certainly make for a better story.

"Where are we again?" she asked, stalling for time as she weighed her options.

He sighed.

"Med-STAR Press," he answered patiently. "The printing center for Metropolis Standardized Testing And Reporting. They only make up standardized tests for middle and secondary schools throughout the Midwest. Hasn't _anyone_ ever used this place before? With the other S.T.A.R. such an obvious target, it's a perfect decoy."

Rather than attempt to answer, Lois ate the dumpling.

"Granted it's not as sexy as making off with all the paraphernalia to crack the Phantom Zone and ransoming it back to the city," Riddler went on defensively, "but it _is_ an S.T.A.R. too, and it is up to its eyeballs in question marks."

"Mhm," Lois agreed cautiously.

"Not sure what kind of themed crimewaves you people are used to," he added irritably. "I mean, 'Toyman' 'Prankster,' it really doesn't inspire terror, y'know. Joker can make the Secret Service piss themselves just by showing up someplace. And Harley can make'em nervous just because if _she's_ around, then Joker _might be_. Did you know she once shut down trading on the stock exchange? It's true, for fifteen minutes, just going into a Duane Reede on Wall Street to buy a toothbrush."

Lois asked for the dipping sauce and a napkin. She was at the point where she'd started writing the story in her head for when she was free.

"Then there's Luthor," Eddie ranted on. "No denying he's the smart one, I'll give you that. Made it all the way to the White House, sure. But then what, hm? Taken out by a scandal. A reporter gets under his skin so he tries to have the guy killed, come on! Plus letting that demonspawn run his company, that speaks for itself on the fuck-up scale and—are you listening?"

Lois nodded vehemently and hurriedly chewed her dumpling.

"You had that far away look, like you're carrying the one," Riddler said suspiciously.

She shook her head vigorously and finally swallowed.

"No, no, paying attention," she assured him. "Luthor's the smart one, but not really because of scandal-reporter-skin, spawndemon-fuck-scale, are you listening."

"It didn't look like you were paying attention," he repeated. "You had this frozen look and you were staring up in that corner—which is just what I do at the Iceberg when Croc is talking about his love life and I'm forced to calculate Pi."

Lois looked horrified.

"Croc is that big killer crocodile guy, right?"

"Killer Croc, Waylon Jones, yes. There are visuals I do not need defiling the sacred temple of my mind, so I calculate Pi. You remember that Britney Spears ad for Diet Pepsi?" he asked.

Lois nodded mutely.

"Thirty-six decimal places."

* * *

Pushing the envelope. Hugo Strange knew as well as anyone that if you wanted to take on an adversary like Batman, you had to push the envelope. The man's cunning was legendary. Nevertheless, he was only a man, and every man had a weakness. In Batman's case, it was Bruce Wayne. Hugo's previous attempts to target Wayne may have gone awry, but those failures resulted from faulty methodology, not a faulty hypothesis. In the past, Hugo attempted to lure Wayne into circumstances where he could be dealt with in his civilian identity. He could see now the great flaw in his approach. He used the knowledge that Bruce Wayne was Batman. He did not use the knowledge that Bruce Wayne was _Bruce Wayne_.

Bruce Wayne was Batman. It was well and good as far as it went. If Hugo could catch Wayne with his guard down, then Batman could be drugged, hypnotized, or killed outright. But all Hugo had ever done with that information was realize Bruce Wayne was the man to go after. It was time to push the envelope! He should not waste his time trying to lure Bruce Wayne into anything. He should use Wayne's own life as the means to know where he would be! Every year, the Wayne Foundation spearheaded a blood drive. Tomorrow, Bruce Wayne would appear at the Park Row Clinic for a photo op, giving the first pint of blood to kick off the event. This year, Hugo would arrange for that blood to be drawn by Brian Dobson, his agent, with a special needle treated to inject enough serum to cripple Wayne's will, making it impossible for him to perform the simplest of tasks—let alone function as Batman—for the seventy-two hours it would take to drive him completely insane.

Brian had infiltrated the Park Row Clinic six weeks before as a volunteer. Now, it only remained to remove this Leslie Thompkins from the equation so that Brian could take her place in the photo op with Wayne. Hugo waited outside her brownstone, chloroform rag in hand. He waited… waited… wondered what kind of all-night bingo game could be keeping the old biddy so late… and waited some more. At last, he spotted his target and moved in, ready to jump her as soon as she paused at the door with her key—when he was suddenly knocked off his feet but the gut-wrenching impact of a vigilante's boots meeting his sternum mid-swing. He was then hoisted into the air by the same vigilante—difficult to identify by only the blur of boot and glove Hugo had seen thus far—grabbing him by his collar, carrying him for the length of the swing, and then hurling him from a height into a dumpster.

Minutes passed while the pain of a concussion mingled with the stench of rotting garbage.

Hugo was finally yanked unceremoniously out of the dumpster by the vigilante—who turned out to be Nightwing. Hugo pointed with a stern index finger at his nose, planning to lecture this brawling boy about the serious nature of head trauma and the inadvisability of dropping unhelmeted heads into metal dumpsters from a height… but he found his speech was slurring too badly to make himself understood, and he wound up passing out in the ambulance before reaching Arkham.

Pushing the envelope. It was necessary if you wanted to take on an adversary like Batman, but there was a great deal of trial and error involved.

* * *

"Not wearing _pants?_" Sparrow asked, horrified.

Sly's hands still shook as he related the story.

"It was like this when I first came to work here," he warbled. "Mr. Cobblepot would lay these traps for Batman: a suspicious file left conspicuously out in the open, with that golden finch knickknack sitting on top of it, facing precisely 23 degrees north by northwest—he knew, he measured. He'd come in every morning and check it with this laser thingy he got from Sharper Image."

"Okay, creepy," Sparrow agreed. "But… that's being paranoid about Batman. And his pants are still on. So how did…?"

"He starts second-guessing himself," Sly explained. "'Wait a second-_kwak_-did I move the finch myself to get to the phone?' Then he'll start retracing his steps. 'Sly hands me receipts… Raven asks about day off… walked to window… practiced putting with umbrella… went to bathroom… phone rings… come out to answer… go back to retrieve pants… come out to answer again… Did Batman have time to get in and out?'"

"Okay, well, I can see how the pants came off that time, but it's still basically just Penguin being crazy-paranoid about Batman, and let's face it, he knows more about that than any of us, right?"

"Yeah," Dove agreed, joining the conversation. "And that was all in the past, right? When he first opened the club. It doesn't really fit in with the cleaning kick he's been on, and it doesn't exactly explain why you had a full-frontal Oswald encounter today."

"I was getting to that," Sly shuddered. "He rented one of those steam cleaners to do his carpets upstairs."

"Oswald Cobblepot is _ steam cleaning his own carpets_?" Sparrow wailed. "That's insane. He gets flunkies to do _everything_. When I first came to work here, he expected me to cut up his meat for him."

Sly sighed.

"I'm just telling you what happened. He does usually get a wench or a henchman to do anything menial, but he's not satisfied with how anyone else cleans right now. He says Claw and Crow 'cut corners,' Talon tracks in more dirt than he sweeps up, and Feather gets fingerprints on everything. So he's up there cleaning the carpets himself, and he somehow backed his way into the bathroom. And since he was stuck, he… took a shower."

"While the carpets dried," Sparrow said flatly.

"I'm guessing it was a very long shower," Sly said meekly.

* * *

Eddie was excited. Here, he had finally found a Metropolan on his own level.

Lois had been just as desperate as Eddie to escape mental images of Killer Croc viewing a Britney Spears commercial for the first time, so she confessed. She confessed that she'd been kidnapped so often over the years that she had it down to a system: While a part of her sat, laid, or knelt there strapped, chained, or cuffed to the monolith, altar, or rocketship, the rest of her started work on the story she would file when it was over. She could carry fourteen to eighteen paragraphs in her head, full text, or notes and bullet points for thirty.

Riddler could appreciate anyone who worked in their head that way, he did it himself! He quickly embarked on a flight of anagramming fancy, beginning with her name as he'd scrambled it to put Superman on notice about his intended kidnapping of ALIEN SOL, and ending… ending with the disquieting observation that the letters LOIS LANE could also be rearranged to spell LO SELINA (another woman who could keep up with him in a city of pinheads that couldn't. And would it have killed her to at least call him after that winged rat broke his legs? After all the trouble he went through to warn them about the little Harvey mix-up? And what does he get for his trouble, hm? Their flying pitbull runs him off the Wayne property, and not a month later, NOBLER KEGS. So fine, screw her, screw them both. Here he was in a nice enough city with its very own flying hero that didn't need a Batline to do it.)

Eddie kept that acidic thought to himself, and instead composed a brief poem: _Ode to an Alien Sol._

* * *

Everyone thought about it their first week at the Iceberg: Robert DeNiro as Al Capone in _The Untouchables,_ strolling around the room, talking about teamwork, handling a baseball bat to illustrate his point as he walks behind his seated capos, all of them nodding and grunting their agreement as he spoke about the team. _Button, Button, Who's got the button_, and all of a sudden—BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!-SPLAT—he beats an offending yes man's head into a bloody pulp that lands in his Waldorf Salad with a meaty squelch.

The thought haunted Raven when she first went to work for Oswald Cobblepot. Every night when she walked into the club, it occurred to her that this might be it: she'd open that door and a dozen henchmen and emperor penguins would be pointing machine gun umbrellas at her head. It never happened, of course, and she'd become accustomed to Oswald, the Iceberg, and the rogues who called it home. She hadn't thought about those old movies for years—until tonight, when she'd walked into the lounge without a care in the world—and found herself staring at a "reception committee." Gina, Sparrow, Dove, Feather, Claw, Crow, Talon and Sly were all standing there waiting for her, grim with purpose.

"Ozzy's gotten weird," that was the gist of it. There was the mini-vac, and it was not for listening devices that were so small they could be mistaken for cookie crumbs. The staff considered that possibility first, but Oswald said he had every confidence in the regular anti-bugging precautions built into the Iceberg walls from the first week of operation. Then there were the air purifiers, which hit you with the smell of ozone and static electricity as soon as you opened the office door. Again, the staff considered the possibility that this was a very sensible precaution on Oswald's part. There really could be spores and pollen in the air. Poison Ivy hadn't been seen for a while, but maybe Oswald knew something they didn't.

Raven agreed that it was all very odd, but Oswald had always been eccentric. Birds and umbrellas, for heaven's sake! She didn't think it was any of her business. The rest of the staff briefly considered "the M. C. 3." Jonathan Crane, Jervis Tetch, and Hugo Strange. All Iceberg regulars who incorporated mind control into their criminal endeavors as the Scarecrow, Mad Hatter, and 'That Creepy One with the Glasses and the Funny Name.' All three were released from Arkham fairly recently—but not recently enough to have racked up thousands of dollars in alibi fees on their monthly bar tabs, which was the usual reason customers turned against Oswald. The staff had spent the better part of the day discussing fear toxins, hats, and Pavlovian conditioning, and none of them could come up with anything the M. C. 3 had to gain by turning Oswald Cobblepot into Adrian Monk… and that's what brought them to Raven.

"Seeing as you're so tight with Dr. Bart and all," Sly announced like it was the most reasonable thing in the world, "we were thinking you should have him come down and have a talk with Ozzy."

Raven refused. She agreed that Oswald was acting strange—a declaration punctuated by the sound of the mini-vac humming again behind his office door, then switching off, and a series of kwaking-coughing curses about the cloud of dust when he changed the bag on this thing—_But_, Raven declared fiercely, that didn't mean he was Arkham-crazy. It wasn't her problem, and it certainly wasn't Leland's. Ozzy didn't need a shrink, she insisted—as the office door opened and Oswald waddled out with a dustbag that he carried and then disposed of like it contained a mini-vac size allotment of nuclear waste—_What he needed,_ Raven concluded, was an exorcist.

* * *

Lois had brought this on herself, she realized that. She simply wasn't sure what to do about it. A half-hour had passed, Superman was nowhere in sight, and Riddler had pulled up a chair across from her so they sat almost knee-to-knee. He didn't want to "overstep" as a kidnapper, but he wished to express NICHE SCORN, "his concern" that is, for the bigshot hero's obvious neglect.

"I thought he was supposed to be good at this 'saving Lois' stuff," Eddie said sincerely. "I know you're with that Kent character now—and snaps for going with brains over brawn, by the way, that alone shows you're a smart woman—but back to the cape. You're still supposed to be Superman's special gal, right? Seems like he's not taking very good care of you, that's all I'm saying. I had an elaborate plan to grab you, assuming Superman would be, you know, _ guarding you_. Not like I didn't explain the riddle clear enough, ALIEN SOL, so even someone in this '7-letter word for newspaper' town can understand. And what do I find? Are there any precautions or protections in place to thwart me? No! There you were, just sitting at home, reading travel advisories for Uzbekistan—and misspelling landlocked, by the way, there's no hyphen…"

Lois tried twice to defuse the situation. She explained that kidnappers, particularly those who grab her to get Superman's attention, tend to be fairly similar, especially when something goes wrong. There are very predictable responses, often involving a gun to her head. Riddler was the first one to… to do whatever that was he just did (pitching woo?), and she really felt she should step in before this went any further. She was going to put aside the fact that she was a prisoner (lord knows, he seems to have done), and talk to him frankly, like a person:

"Don't get flirty with the hero's girl. Even though I'm married to Clark now, Superman and I are quite close, and you don't want to get chummy. The results could be unfortunate—for you. I'm not saying he'd break your legs or anything, but—"

She had to stop then. It seemed Riddler was choking on a wonton. Lois didn't think she could perform the Heimlich maneuver handcuffed to a chair, but she was prepared to try anyway when he managed to dislodge the obstruction on his own.

"I was NOT pitching woo," he announced, trying for dignity.

He said he was just frustrated, he said he could put a gun to her head if it would make her feel more comfortable. Lois said no, that wouldn't help. He said good, he didn't possess one. And that concluded Lois's first attempt to defuse the situation.

Time passed….And still no Superman arrived….

Lois wasn't expecting him any time soon. She realized that he wouldn't know she'd been taken until he went home and found her missing, and if he'd seen this "Alien Sol" clue at the ballgame, he would have gone straight into defense mode elsewhere. So she was on her own—which was the way she liked it. She regarded the Riddler shrewdly, and resolved to try again.

"Calculating Pi?" she asked sweetly. "You're looking off into the corner."

"Not that into math," he responded gruffly. "The query of the day is 'Where are this guy's priorities?'"

"Oh, because you looked bored," Lois said casually.

"I'm not bored. I am pondering what passes for thought in this so-called Superman's less-than-super brain. I am putting forth the proposition that if the guy's 'interest' makes you a target, then he's got some responsibility to be taking care of you, and in my opinion, to be doing so a lot better than this," Riddler said, snapping back to the original subject.

"Maybe it's a Gotham thing," Lois sighed, giving up.

Riddler arched an eyebrow… he began to feel he was about five seconds away from what Dr. Bartholomew would call "an episode."

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?" he asked archly.

"It means that you're the strangest little man who's ever kidnapped me," Lois replied, "And that's saying something. _And_ the most atypical kidnapping prior to this was Catwoman, so I figure it must be some kind of Gotham—

"LOOK I DO NOT HAVE A THING FOR SELINA!" he screamed. "SHE DANGLES MODIFIERS, FOR ONE THING, SHE WON'T WEAR GREEN ON A BET, AND SHE HAS _NO_ TASTE IN MEN! JUST BECAUSE A GUY DOESN'T STAND AROUND WHILE SOME 'CATNIPS THUDS' GOES RUNNING AROUND TOWN LIKE A FAKE CATWOMAN, DOESN'T MEAN HE FEELS ANYTHING BEYOND ORDINARY FRIENDSHIP FOR THE REAL CAT! I HAD EVERY REASON TO STEP IN THERE, SHE WAS MESSING UP MY TIMETABLE. IT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH KEEPING SELINA OUT OF TROUBLE, AND FLUMMOX IS A CUTE NAME FOR A CAT ANYWAY. THAT WAS A FAIR CLUE, WHETHER THEY APPRECIATED IT OR NOT. AND OF COURSE I'M GONNA SEND IT TO THE HOUSE! IT'S A LIVING THING! YOU CAN'T GO PUTTING A LIVE CAT IN A CARDBOARD BOX AND JUST _DROP_ IT AT THE BATSIGNAL. AIR HOLES OR NOT, IT COULD BE UP THERE FOR HOURS BEFORE SOMEONE FINDS IT, MIDDLE OF THE SUMMER, THE THING COULD UP AND _DIE_ AND _THEN_ WHERE WOULD I BE, HM? DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT SHE'D DO TO ME IF I KILLED A CAT?"

* * *

Nonsensicalicitiousness, the benchmark of genius. Anyone could be bizarre, off base, or weird. If invention consisted of nothing more than thinking what had not been thought before _because it was stupid_, where would be the cleverness in that? But Nonsense, Inspired Nonsense is the essence of genius. Genius does not reject what has gone before, it transcends it. A white rabbit, a rabbit hole, a red queen and a hookah-smoking caterpillar, that is genius, nonsensicalicious genius.

The Mad Hatter did not cling faddishly to headwear as the only means to attach his control chips to a victim, not with such a frabjous alternative before him. A dance club called The Rabbit Hole, the very name Jervis Tetch would have chosen as a front. But he didn't! The owners came up with the name on their own, along with the idea of wristbands: red, yellow, and blue. Red meant only that a valid ID had been presented at the door. Yellow could access the VIP room. Blue was for designated drivers to receive free soft drinks at the bar. All were made of plastic jelly, ideal for concealing control chips.

It only took a day to take over the club and a week to make the adjustments. The wristbands didn't have that ideal proximity to the brain that you had with a nice tophat, but they could easily keep a trance going once the subject was under, and the flashing lights and thumping music of the dance club presented countless opportunities for that. At the end the first week, the Mad Hatter had his new Wonderland operating at full capacity… until somehow it all turned against him. He still didn't now how it happened, but all of a sudden the music stopped, the lights came up, the March Hare opened up the doors and the Knave of Hearts ordered everyone to leave in a calm, orderly fashion. Alice herself admitted Robin to the Hatter's private sanctum above the dance floor, and then she kicked him in the groin after Robin had him handcuffed. It was conversish and contrariwise, and he couldn't figure out how his most cleverishiciously secretocious operation had been discovered.

* * *

"Tim and Randy-quad had a couple fake IDs?" Catwoman laughed. "Boys will be boys, I guess. Tough break, Jervis."

Batman grunted, looked out over the city and back at Selina. He'd finished his second patrol early and reached the Moxton roof an hour ahead of schedule. To his surprise, Selina swung by a few minutes later, and he'd been telling her about the night's successes. At first it was an odd throwback to the first visits to her apartment after patrol. There was something about being in costume and still in the city. He'd remained in a Batman frame of mind, the old detachment holding firm as he talked about apprehending Scarecrow and Nightwing's capture of Hugo Strange. But that changed as he told her about The Rabbit Hole. Bruce couldn't be sure if it was her reaction or something in him, but he felt the shift. Robin apprehending Mad Hatter was a Batman concern, but Tim sneaking into a nightclub with a fake ID…

"He said he was 'just trying to keep up appearances around Randy' and 'look like a normal teenager.'"

"Then, I imagine, he found himself on the receiving end of the back alley glare," Selina guessed. "The one that makes third generation wiseguys consider life in a Jesuit monastery?"

Batman stifled the liptwitch.

"He _says_ he's got 'great intel' on the underground fake ID racket."

"**That's two,**" Catwoman growled in her playful imitation of the stern bat-gravel.

This time, Batman permitted his lip to twitch.

"I do believe his final excuse, that sneaking into the club had nothing to do with buying alcohol. It's just that 'all of the good clubs in the city' are strictly twenty one and over, and the teen-focused alternatives 'just suck.'"

"Poor kid," Selina laughed sympathetically. Then a comfortable silence settled over the rooftop and, feeling the easy contentment, Selina broke into a gently playful grin. "So now will you tell me how you hurt your jaw?"

"Sadly, it really was a training mishap… It's just that, well, I was a little distracted this morning," he admitted.

"Mmm… Any chance that it was my little New Zealand celebration that distracted you?" she asked with a teasing purr.

"You did seem a bit… over-excited by it all."

"Oh _Woof. _ You admit it. Here I thought you'd fib and I would get to say **'That's two'** again."

He said nothing. Another comfortable silence was filled with the distant sound of traffic on the river, and little else.

"I have another question… an awkward one," Selina said softly. "Did we ride in together tonight so I would be stuck with you as my ride home and it would be damn tricky for me to take the entire Egyptian Wing home in the back of the Batmobile?"

"They do have a complete mock up of a pyramid, several sarcophagi and a full scale temple, I doubt it would fit in the back seat," he said flatly.

"I'm serious."

"I'm not."

"_Why?_ Did you at least consider the _possibility_ that I might Watergate it?"

"No, of course not," he answered instantly. "I honestly don't know what you might do at this point, Selina, but I knew it wasn't that."

"Good. I'm glad… and maybe a little disappointed."

"What, you _want_ me to think that you'd still go out there and do something like that?"

"No, of course not," she said, echoing the speed and inflection of his delivery. "Maybe it's just… Jervis, Jonathan, Hugo, and some chick in New Zealand. Everybody's having a little fun tonight except me."

* * *

"…" Lois stared, appalled.

"…" Eddie replied, defiant.

"…" she repeated.

"…" he retorted.

And then…

"That was off the record," Eddie said meekly.

Lois raised a humorless eyebrow and tapped an impatient foot. Eddie pursed his lips, silently stubborn, as his eyes darted around the room to a pair of chopsticks (COP'S SHTICK), a pair of handcuffs hooked on a folding chair (A CHILD OF GRIN) and six unexploded exploding question marks (TAME QUIRKS ON-oh why bother?) The flotsam of another failed attempt at criminal greatness, that's what he was looking at, and his frustration spiked as he kicked an empty Chinese takeout container—which ricocheted off a printing press and bounced back to hit him in the head.

Lois smiled kindly.

"I'm just going to escape on my own now. Ta."

* * *

…to be continued…


	4. Up, Up and Away

**Riddle Me-Tropolis**_  
Chapter 4: Up, Up and Away_

* * *

Alfred normally brought breakfast to the Wayne Manor bedroom, along with the day's freshly pressed newspapers and pre-sorted mail slipped into a side basket on the breakfast tray specially built for the purpose. It was only on days when some pressing matter, such as a meeting at Wayne Enterprises, had been scheduled before noon that Alfred altered the practice, reserving the "carrot" of a full breakfast to coax Master Bruce out of bed. He would bring only juice and mineral water on the breakfast tray, and inform the Master and Mistress (somewhat coldly) that breakfast was laid out in the dining room. Groaning would follow, which Alfred declined to hear thanks to that selective deafness which is the hallmark of the professional butler.

In truth, of course, he was not that indifferent to Bruce's plight. He did _look_ at the newspapers as he ran the hot iron over them. He'd seen the trio of stories about the Scarecrow, Mad Hatter, and Hugo Strange's capture. Even if the latter two were achieved through the young masters' efforts, Batman still had a very full night. Alfred wasn't pleased to be getting him up so early, so in his eminently Alfredian way, he made it up to Bruce with an especially lavish breakfast. The couple always helped themselves at breakfast, but Alfred peeked in the dining room all the same. He saw that Bruce was enjoying a large helping of eggs florentine as he read over the morning papers, while Miss Selina took a small portion of eggs benedict and talked about a drive up to the Catitat the couple were planning after Bruce's meeting. Satisfied, Alfred withdrew to inventory the cave's medical supplies before preparing a picnic basket for their journey.

Bruce set the newspaper aside and glanced through a backlog of invitations, social announcements, thank you notes, and similar correspondence—until a Metropolis postmark caught his eye. There was no return address, but the handwriting was vaguely familiar although not instantly recognizable. It wasn't Clark's or Lois's, he thought as he slid out the card. A distant corner of his brain was subconsciously searching his mental rolodex, trying to place the handwriting from among his Metropolis acquaintances. He might have identified it sooner from the distinctive green of the card that slid from the envelope, if the postmark hadn't predisposed him to consider out-of-towners first. As it was, he'd barely registered the color and was taken completely off-guard when he opened the card and a square of green construction paper fell into his lap. Picking it up, Bruce saw that it was cut into a block letter "E."

"Well, looks like my Catitat plans are cancelled," Selina said wryly.

Bruce looked up sharply, and saw Selina was holding a green "E" identical to his own.

He glared at it, then at the one he held, then at the card it fell out of. He scrutinized this: green glossy cover, flat white interior, no words either preprinted or handwritten, nothing at all visible to the eye. Possibly a fingerprint or two might remain, if he hadn't smudged them by now. He checked the envelope—and now recognized the handwriting instantly as that of Edward Nigma. He looked up at Selina again, she was holding up her E as well as the card.

"Eddie says 'Hi'," she announced brightly.

"Let me see that," Bruce snarled, rising from the table and crossing to her in three ferocious strides.

"No. Ask nice," she countered.

"Selina, give me the clue," he ordered in Batman's fiercest gravel.

"Ask nice," she repeated distinctly.

Bruce closed his eyes. The more things change… It wasn't the first time they'd done this. In the past, any time Catwoman had information he needed, she turned it into one of these games where the more he insisted, the more playful she became, answering the angriest of demands with the naughtiest of grins, and making him jump through hoops humoring her and her impossible assumptions about their feelings for each other. But it had always been _ Batman_ that had to deal with her that way, on some clandestine rooftop, with the clock ticking on a pressing investigation. This was _Bruce Wayne_ in _his own dining room_. The most pressing time factor, as far as he knew, was that his eggs were getting cold. And the feelings he could now admit freely without the camouflage of a crimefighter who needed to "humor" a teasing informant.

"Kitten, please let me see what Riddler sent you," he said dryly.

"Meow," she replied, handing it over.

The E was identical to his… The card was identical… The envelope… similar. It had the same Metropolis postmark, the same innocuous Liberty head on the stamp, the same handwriting scribbling the same address. Only the first line differed, the name of the addressee: Miss Selina Kyle. Bruce felt an angry pulsing behind his eyes as he stared at those words.

"I warned him," he graveled ominously. "I said no more clues sent to the manor addressed to you, _ever_."

"What are you going to do, break his legs _again_?"

Bruce looked down at her in a haze of stunned amazement. It wasn't the woman he lived with who had spoken, not the woman he loved and was trying to protect. It was the Batman foe of old, the willful Cat who laughed off Batman's most terrifying postures and then poked fun at him for it.

"Face it, Bruce, Psychobat shot his wad where Eddie is concerned. He's already paid the piper; now he gets to hear the tune."

It could have been Nigma himself taunting him. Bruce glared hatefully, but as always Catwoman didn't seem to notice.

"And if this is the tune he wants to hear," she said, taking back her half of the clue, "Well, sending me construction paper really isn't the end of the world, now is it?"

"Yes," he spat.

"It was a rhetorical question."

"With Riddler, there are never rhetorical questions."

"True. But I'm not Riddler," she teased, rising from her seat and pressing against him. "Would have thought we established that a long time ago."

He grunted.

"So, Dark Knight, we've got two letter Es in the morning mail. Cancel your meeting and let's go have some fun."

"This isn't fun."

"You said your meeting at WE is on 'new legal and fiscal frameworks for grant-making entities mandated by changes in foreign tax codes impacting corporate philanthropy in relation to the 1 law.' Here, on the other hand, we have two letter Es. Let's party."

He refused to smile. He refused to twitch. He refused to even grunt. He did tell Alfred to call Lucius and make his apologies, and to put Captain Leffinger on standby as he might be taking Wayne One to Metropolis on short notice.

* * *

When Leland Bartholomew went back to working at Arkham, it nearly ended his relationship with Raven. Since they reconciled, there was still a strain, not because she objected to the danger like before, but because of their relative schedules. She didn't get back from the nightclub until three, sometimes later. If he tried to wait up, he was too tired to be much "fun." He felt like a dotty old man half the time, at the very time he most wanted to be dashing and virile. If he gave up and went to sleep and then tried to rouse her in the morning before he left for work, his attempt was usually met with the kind of pillow flogging Patient Quinn indulged in when Bartholomew confined "her precious Puddin" to solitary.

The solution they finally arrived at also made Bartholomew feel like a dotty old man, but only temporarily. The moment he got home from work, he would remove his coat, kick off his shoes, empty his pockets of car keys and other uncomfortable objects, flop onto his sofa, and take a long _nap_. Each and every time, he felt like a pathetic old fossil as he did so… but then when he woke up, he had to splash off his face and get ready for _his 26 year old girlfriend to arrive_. That exorcised any thought of false teeth, hearing aids, and retirement home shuffleboard!

They still cooked together, although they saved the more ambitious dishes for her nights off. Tonight was going to be a simple frittata so they would have time to watch a movie. He was slowly winning her over on the superiority of originals over these wretched remakes that overcompensated in a Freudian fashion for their many shortcomings with such telling displays of gratuitous sex and violence. So far, they had examined _The Manchurian Candidate, Ocean's Eleven, The Omen, _and_ Alfie._ Tonight, he had a special treat, the one he had been saving, the original_ Dial M for Murder_. That Grace Kelly was such a delight…

* * *

Like any cat, Selina did not let a position taken yesterday interfere with whatever she wanted to do today. Yesterday she would have clawed the eyes out of anyone suggesting she was a crimefighter. Tomorrow she would do the same. Today, she had followed Bruce down to the cave and was completely immersed in The Case of the Green Es. After all, this wasn't some lowlife tabloid or presumptuous hero making assumptions about her; it was Eddie, and he was inviting her to a party.

Bruce was running the last 48 hours worth of autodownloads through a new filter weighted for Metropolis and Riddler-specific keywords, when Alfred buzzed on the intercom.

..:A telephone call for you, sir. Mr. Kent. Shall I transfer it down there, or will you take it upstairs?:..

Bruce grimaced, Selina smirked, and Alfred transferred the call, just as the data-matrix identified an item of interest in the previous Saturday's Daily Planet.

"Clark," Bruce began, preempting any lengthier social pleasantries. "What happened at the ballgame Saturday, and why is there no account of it in yesterday's DP?"

There was a pause. Then

..:I assume this line is secure?:..

"Of course it is. I'm in the cave. You're on speaker, by the way. Selina is here."

"Hey, Spitcurl," she called out.

..:Em, yes. Hello, Selina.:..

"The game," Bruce resumed. "It was 'Daily Planet Day,' correct? There is a personal ad addressed to you specifically in that morning's paper, saying he 'doesn't like to be cliché, but since it's Daily Planet Day.' Obviously something was meant to happen at the game. What was it?"

..:Eh… Yeah, that's kind of why I'm calling, Bruce. I wanted to give you a heads up that your Riddler is in town and—:..

"I _know_ that, Clark, that's why_ I_ was about to call _you_. You might have let me know sooner."

..:I just found out myself. See there was no indication that this warning on the scoreboard came from him, it just seemed like one of the usual suspects calling me out.:..

Selina and Bruce both raised an eyebrow, each wondering what kind of Riddler clue could be confused with General Zod asking Superman to step outside for a superpowered slugfest.

"Um, so… how did you find out it was Eddie?" Selina asked at last.

There was another strained pause, and then

..:Lois told me.:..

Bruce shook his head and Selina stifled her laugh—but Clark's hearing picked it up anyway.

..:It seems they had quite a chat. He apparently kidnapped her—and no, Bruce, before you say it, there isn't anything about _ that_ in the Daily Planet either. Neither of us think it's a good idea to make the story public at this point.:..

"Oh my god, he kissed him," Selina muttered.

..:I heard that:.. Clark said irritably. ..:No one kissed anyone. No one dropped anyone either. Catwoman's record is intact there. Thank Rao.:..

Selina stuck her tongue out at the console, and Bruce growled.

"Someone better tell me what happened at the ballgame," he insisted.

Clark explained briefly about the exhibition on the scoreboard and his assumptions about "ALIEN SOL" as a warning.

"It's an anagram for Lois Lane," Bruce said instantly.

..:I know that _now_:.. Clark replied.

As they talked, Bruce had pulled the Arkham records on Nigma's release and expanded the data-matrix to examine all the autodownloads back to that date. He didn't mention the findings to Clark, he simply transferred them to a memory stick and slipped it into his pocket. He also explained about the Es that he and Selina had received and said they would be arriving in Metropolis that afternoon.

..:Both of you?:.. Clark asked.

Bruce glanced at Selina before replying.

"The clues were sent to each of us individually," he explained.

..:I know, that's what I mean. So isn't it playing into his hands to bring Selina along? Seems to me if he sends something like that addre—:..

"Clark, I'm looking at three Riddler communiqués right now, all from this past week, none of which you apparently noticed or recognized for what they were, despite the fact that two address you directly as Superman, and one is a full page ad _in the newspaper you work for_ simply reading 'Riddle Me-Tropolis.' I think you better leave interpreting the clues to me."

* * *

"Oh man!" Tim whined when he saw the hemorrhage of red ink on his essay. "A 67? A 67?? Barbara you're killing me! I go to _Brentwood Academy_. Do you have any idea of the standards there? I never got lower than an 85 on ANYTHING, this is such a crock!"

"Plenty of suggestions there to bring up your score," Barbara said coolly.

"I should've just let Hatter turn us into Tweedledum and Tweedledee," he muttered, returning to the computer.

His punishment for the fake ID was two hundred rounds of Zogger on Cassie's profile which, left at that, was effectively a death sentence. He could deduct up to one hundred rounds by writing a research paper on the role of the internet in the upsurge of fake IDs among tech-savvy teens, his paper to be graded by Barbara the All-Seeing Oracle (Oh, THAT'S FAIR!) and one round of Zogger to be deducted for every gradepoint she awarded. A perfect 100 would leave him with only one hundred rounds of Zogger to perform (still a death sentence if left at that). He could then proceed to Phase Two to eliminate the rest, Phase Two which proved conclusively that Bruce would make a crueler, nastier, and deadlier villain than ANY Tim had faced as Robin (or ever would).

The only upside to the whole situation was that the essay-grading (and apparently the essay-_rewriting,_ unless he wanted to accept thirty-three rounds of Zogger) brought him to Barbara and Dick's co-op, which meant a little commiseration with Dick, if he ever got back. He'd gone out jogging as soon as Tim arrived, leaving Tim with only Bytes the cat for a little sympathy when Barbara took out her red pen and proceeded to write an essay of her own in the margins of his paper. So far from being sympathetic, the cat just played with his shoelace.

Tim really had to wonder if becoming Mad Hatter's Tweedledum would have been so bad.

* * *

Selina was engaged in her usual routine onboard Wayne One, enjoying the fabulous luxuries Bruce had his plane stocked with in order to appear like a decadent fop. She brought him a plate of scallop rolls topped with crab and caviar along with a glass of champagne, closed the lid of his laptop with a determined growl, set a similar plate down for herself, sipped, nibbled, and purred.

Bruce opened his laptop again, but took a scallop roll.

"I don't drink when I fly," he said absently, returning his attention to the computer screen.

"Why not?"

"I just don't."

"Bruce, there is nothing to see there that you didn't already find in the cave. Riddle Me-Tropolis, 'Not Daily, but you have to track them somehow. The source of your own power holds the key.'"

"That was probably S.T.A.R. Labs," Bruce interrupted. "Sun or star as the source of Superman's power and it is a fairly attractive target."

"Agreed. So 'Riddle Me', 'Source of your power,' and then this Daily Planet Day setting up the Lois clue on the scoreboard."

"Your point?" he asked irritably.

"That you've already found all there is to find right now, so turn off the computer and have a glass of champagne with me."

He thought about it, then shut the laptop and ate another scallop. Selina leaned forward, taking his hand and rubbing the soft flesh of the palm seductively before placing his champagne glass inside it. Then she curled his fingers deliberately around the glass, and finally touched the top of the glass gently with her own.

"To a new adventure," she purred, staring into his eyes.

"You're enthusiastic," Bruce whispered, the soft intimacy of his tone dipping into Batman's gravel.

"I am…" She purred again, running her finger around the rim of the glass. "It's been a long time since we 'worked' together."

"Ah… It has, hasn't it."

He understood what she meant. In the literal sense, they had just worked together on the Vaniel investigation, and before that, he frequently asked for Catwoman's expertise if a security system was involved. But this felt very different. He didn't initiate her involvement and neither did she. They had both been pulled into the case by a third party, by the Riddler sending them clues individually. It didn't feel like any of the times they'd worked together since becoming a couple. It felt like the early "team ups" when they were thrown together by circumstances… Except, of course, that in those days if the case brought them to a new city, they would be arriving separately… Or if they did travel together, it would be in costume in the Batwing or the Batmobile… In either case, he would not be flying her on Wayne One… He would not have Selina maneuvering into his lap, unbuttoning his shirt, and rubbing her fingers across the scars of an early cat scratch on his chest while she nibbled on his neck.

"Kitten," he murmured, trying to calculate how soon they would be landing.

"_mmmeooowwwwrrrlll_" was the only reply.

* * *

90? 90? Was she kidding? That paper was perfect! PERFECT! Tim had worked in every damn one of Barbara's "suggestions" to raise his score, including the really STUPID one: _ Since the most common fake ID is a New Jersey driver's license, find out how much it's going to cost them to switch to a new license template that won't be so easy to counterfeit, then come up with three better things they could do with that money if it wasn't for this necessity._

Three "better" things to do with 12 million, like _ that_ wasn't a matter of opinion!

It was a stupid suggestion, but Tim had gone along with it. He found out it would cost 12 million dollars for New Jersey to redesign and rollout a new driver's license, he proposed three other things they could have done with that amount instead, and here was Barbara withholding two points because he didn't say to spend the money on _libraries_! As if humoring Mr. Offred's pet ideas about Groupthink to improve a Brentwood grade wasn't bad enough, now he had to humor a fanatical ex-librarian while her cat romanced his shoe.

At that point, Tim had stormed into the Grayson kitchen "to get a glass of water," but really because Dick was back from jogging and had gone into the kitchen for a cold drink. Tim was hoping for a sympathetic ear, one that wasn't covered in fur and more interested in rubbing against his shoe than listening to his troubles. But did he get it? No! Dick pretty much blew off his complaints. He didn't care that much about the fake ID, but he was disappointed that Tim hadn't (a) "covered his tracks better" and (b) didn't "stand up to Bruce a little instead of just accepting the Zogger punishment without any fuss."

Tim couldn't believe what he was hearing. Hello! It was a Mad Hatter operation and he'd covered his tracks pretty damn well freeing the drones and taking down the bad guy without exposing any identities! And as for standing up to Bruce, he— he— sigh. Next time he'd just let Hatter turn him into Tweedledum and Randy-quad into Tweedledee.

* * *

Views were everything in Metropolis. Long before Superman arrived, the city that invented the skyscraper took great pride in the magnificent vistas that could be enjoyed only by getting above all the bustling excitement in order to look out over it. After Superman arrived, that breathtaking grandeur was enhanced by a latent excitement: there was always a chance you might glimpse a streak of blue-red zipping across the sky as you gazed.

The Metropolis Four Seasons offered its wealthiest guests two such views from its ultra-exclusive 46th floor: there was the Presidential Suite overlooking Lake Metropolis, and the Royal Suite looking out on the city itself. The Presidential was considered the superior of the two, larger by over 1,000 square feet, but Bruce Wayne opted for the Royal. He preferred a cityscape to a water view, but more importantly, the Royal had _ not_ been "specially designed to accommodate the personal taste of President Alexander Luthor and honored by his esteemed patronage on no fewer than six presidential visits to the City of Tomorrow." Given the alternative of spending a week or more surrounded by Luthoriana, Bruce was happy to settle for the smaller quarters. Even though the suite's master bedroom, living room, and dining room would all fit into his closet at the manor, it was preferable to using a bed where Lex Luthor himself had slept.

The Four Seasons offered several amenities to guests of Bruce's stature, amenities he was used to. For one thing, they sent a hotel valet to unpack the luggage. Without Alfred accompanying him, he had allowed it for appearance' sake. His Batman costume was safely hidden in a jewel case that Selina carried with her and would not be entrusted to any hotel personnel. She had personally stowed it in the suite's safe in the bedroom, and then joined Bruce in the living room with a bright, not-too-naughty smile (considering she just had her paws on a new safe).

"Alfred's spiritual twin may have had a hand in decorating that bedroom," she joked. "It's definitely got that 'too much pink' thing going." Her voice was clear and strident, obviously speaking for the valet's benefit, for once she was close enough, she shifted to a confidential whisper. "It's better than the courtesy safe that you'd find in a regular hotel room, but it's not really up to our standards. Okay for an oil heiress to stow away her million dollar earrings, but for what you're keeping in there…"

"It's fine," Bruce said absently as he eyed another amenity with suspicion. He said no more until the valet had left. He walked the fellow to the door, tipped him and shut the door behind him, and then returned to Selina in the living room.

"Anyone breaking in for the million dollar earrings," he said, picking up the conversation where they'd left off, "would probably be doing it at night, and there won't be anything but earrings to find there after sunset… This, on the other hand, is mildly suspicious."

Selina looked. Bruce was scrutinizing a china platter displayed prominently on the coffee table with the words "Welcome to Metropolis" spelled out around the rim in sprinkled cocoa. It was filled with thin, coiled ribbons of chocolate, each bearing a thin strip of purple icing down the center. Bruce picked one of these up and examined it carefully, holding it up to the light.

"Bruce? Earth to Bruce… It's chocolate."

"They used to send fruit," he noted sourly.

"Okay."

"This is chocolate," he pronounced with disgust.

"I salute you, World's Greatest—"

"Selina, you like chocolate."

"Along with 98 percent of the human race, yes."

"And it has a purple stripe. Selina, this isn't a welcome gift from the management, it's from _him_."

"Well, if it is, that's sweet. But how could he know we were in town, let alone where we'd—"

"Because I told him," Bruce interrupted. "I reserved the room in my own name, hotel reservations go into a computer, and with Nigma, that's as good as faxing him an itinerary. Selina, that's why we came in on Wayne One. I'm not trying to sneak in under the radar. I want him to know that I received his clues and am responding accordingly."

"_We_ received his clues, Bruce."

"Yes… That's presumably why this is here. To reiterate your inclusion."

She laughed.

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, Bruce. And sometimes a chocolate ribbon streaked with purple is just a friend that knows I like chocolate saying hi."

Before he could reply, there was a knock at the door and a cheerful Hispanic voice announced "Anita! Housekeeping!" Bruce raised an eyebrow, and Selina laughed again.

"Oh come on, this is fun. You don't even have to suit up or go out. You just sit back and it all comes to you."

"Anita! Housekeeping!" sounded again outside the door. Selina went to open it, Bruce told her to check the peephole first, and "Anita Housekeeping!" was admitted. She set a large arrangement of pussywillows on the table and explained, through a heavy accent, that the hotel had received special instructions to have flowers in the room when the Waynes checked in. She apologized that they were late.

At that point, Anita seems to have exhausted her English. For when Bruce tipped her, she expressed her gratitude by smiling widely and gesturing around the room indicating "Clean items" and "Me cleans it," as if to explain that flower delivery was not her usual function in the hotel and why the generous couple might have use for her services again.

Anita departed, and Selina shut the door behind her.

"That accent was preposterous," Bruce said acidly as he inspected the delivery.

"Pussywillows," Selina beamed. "I'm feeling the love."

Bruce examined the card. Neither the envelope nor the card itself were green; it was the standard hotel stock embossed with the Four Seasons logo. The handwriting was not Nigma's but that of an innocent florist or concierge. The message itself, however, left little doubt as to the sender. It consisted of a single word: IF.

* * *

Leland was worried. His going back to work at Arkham had nearly ended his relationship with Raven and was still a source of strain. Now, here she was, pausing _Dial M for Murder_ to talk about it. It was obvious she'd been distracted all night. She didn't say two words while they'd cooked the dinner and he didn't think she even tasted her frittata, she looked so unfocused as she ate. He'd asked, like anyone would, what was wrong, and she brushed it off.

He said fine. She wasn't a patient, after all. If she didn't want to talk about it, he had no business pushing her. So they sat back and started the movie, and now just as Grace Kelly was about to answer the phone and be attacked by the strangler, Raven wanted him to visit her at the Iceberg tomorrow in order to "stealth-treat" Oswald Cobblepot!

* * *

_"If ?" _Selina gaped.

"That's what it says," Bruce replied, handing her the card with those two letters and nothing more, written in a flowing script.

"If," she repeated. "One night at the Berg, Eddie was waxing on words that don't need question marks. They convey the question all by themselves. He went ten minutes on 'why' and just segued into 'if' when Two-Face gassed him."

Bruce didn't answer. He was staring out the window. He'd seen Clark leave the Daily Planet building ten minutes earlier and head towards the river. Now the Man of Steel was returning from that direction, when he suddenly veered off towards the executive airport where Wayne One had landed and was temporarily housed.

"I think Clark just discovered we're here," Bruce said abruptly. Before he could explain, he felt the vibrating burr of the JLA communicator concealed in his cell phone.

Selina was amused to watch the density shift as he answered it.

"Yes Clark," he graveled. "About an hour ago, we're just settling in… Four Seasons, top floor, facing the city…"

Before he could say more, Selina was opening the largest corner window.

"Honey, get off the phone. We have company," she called.

The usual social pleasantries followed: Clark asked about their flight in. Selina said it was quiet and uneventful. She offered him a chocolate and asked after Lois. Clark forwarded Lois's hellos to both of them, her hopes that they could all meet for dinner before Bruce and Selina left town, and her reminder to Bruce that he hadn't given her an exclusive since the WayneTech buyout of all those LexCorp subsidiaries. He then helped himself to another chocolate and said they were awfully good. Bruce said he'd be happy to give Lois five minutes on the record before he returned to Gotham, they'd have to wait and see about dinner, it depended on a lot of factors that he couldn't foresee at this time. The chocolates, he added dryly, were sent by Nigma.

Clark's eyes grew wide as he looked from Bruce down to the plate of chocolates he was munching, then up at Selina—who treated him to a naughty grin of the "don't take candy from villainesses" variety.

"He sent flowers too," Bruce declared in Batman's pitiless gravel.

Superman looked utterly confused.

"Funny, my guys tend to sent kryptonite missiles," was all the response he could manage.

"That is direct," Selina said cheerily. "But then hijacking the scoreboard in the middle of a ballgame isn't exactly dripping with subtlety, so I don't think we can hang the communications breakdown on that alone."

"You call this a communications breakdown?" Clark asked, picking up one of the chocolate ribbons and handing it to Bruce. "There's a message in that one."

Bruce snapped the candy ribbon in two to reveal a hollow center and slid out a small slip of paper curled into a tight cylinder. Gently unrolling it with his fingertips, he revealed a single word: TINY.

"Tiny," Bruce read.

"Tiny," Clark repeated.

"Should I see where I packed the aspirin?" Selina asked.

"Yes," both men answered in unison.

* * *

Leland was firm. Psychiatry delved into the most private recesses of an individual's psyche. It was not possible to "stealth-treat" a patient, it was unethical to "stealth-diagnose," and it was outrageous to treat a professional psychiatrist like a lawyer, tax adviser, or auto mechanic you happened to know socially and could eke some free advice out of between scenes on movie night! Even if none of that were true, the very idea of making a housecall for a little compulsive cleaning disorder when he'd just had Jonathan Crane, Hugo Strange, and Jervis Tetch dropped into his already overcrowded schedule… That's when Raven sobbed and Leland rather lost his train of thought—perfectly valid though that train of thought had been!

She hadn't wanted to bother him, she said. She'd taken the same view that he had when the staff first came to her: a mini-vac in his office, so what? It's not like he was coming out to the bar asking customers to lift their feet so he could sweep underneath. It wasn't affecting the nightclub, so it really had nothing to do with them as Iceberg employees. But then, well, there had been this salesman pushing some new bottled water and she had to go into Oswald's office herself in order to tell him and… and…

"And?" Leland prompted, curiosity getting the better of his anger.

"Wipes!" Raven exclaimed. "He has six different kinds of wipes in there. There's one kind for glass and formica, and one for dry dusting, one for wood surfaces, one for metal and doorknobs—"

"I think I get the picture," Leland said awkwardly. He knew the precise aisle in the grocery store where they were displayed and had scrutinized them himself, trying to make some sense of it all.

"And of course a hand desanitizer," Raven went on. "That one he used right after he let me in, and then he wiped the doorknob with it. He saw something on the Today show about this really contagious stomach flu you can get just using an elevator button after someone's pushed it."

"Raven, I'll admit the behavior is somewhat neurotic, but really, stomach flu is very unpleasant. I saw that same segment on Today, and I've been washing my hands more frequently ever since. It really doesn't compare to dressing up as a scarecrow and saturating a college campus with booby trapped iPods."

"WIPES, Leland! He has six kinds of _wipes_ in his office! Somebody has to talk to him. If you won't do it, then you've got to release Harley Quinn, she's the only other psychiatrist we've got since Hugo got pinched."

Leland sighed. He didn't like the idea… but the fact was that Harley was already scheduled to be released in two weeks. The thought of her attempting to diagnose or treat a patient—particularly in those "rogue" circles. The way they all adhered to trends, Leland could easily envision more of them appealing to Harley after she'd treated Oswald, and then what? Was he to have her sabotaging any progress he made with his Arkham patients as soon as they were released? No, it was far better to put ethics aside and at least talk to Cobblepot long enough to identify the problem. Then he could honestly tell Raven there was nothing to worry about, she could forward that much to the rest of this overanxious staff, and that would be that.

* * *

Bruce massaged his brow while Selina went for the aspirin. Clark continued to stare at the chocolates and the clue that was concealed inside one of them. TINY. Then he turned his attention to the flowers.

"Pussywillows… I don't get it," he said, unembarrassed to admit it.

"It's… complicated, Clark. They're… friends."

"You and her were 'complicated,' Bruce, this is something else entirely. This is—cigars too. Lois figured out about the coffee, but she had no idea Perry had to give up cigars as well," he laughed.

Bruce closed his eyes wearily. He knew without looking up that Selina must have returned, and he knew too that she would have seen through Clark's clumsy attempt to change the subject. The only question now was if she'd be annoyed or amused by it.

"Aspirin?" she offered sweetly. "These did not come from him, we brought them from Gotham."

Amused, apparently. That figured. Maybe Batman would no longer consider the possibility that she might empty out the Egyptian wing if properly motivated, but she could still make Superman nervous, at least for a few minutes. Bruce swallowed the aspirin in a gulp; he should have expected this, all of it. Before coming to Metropolis, before he kissed her that first time. He should have known at the first naughty grin. The infinite complications of a crimefighter falling for a criminal, the infinite web of connections linking her to that other world, the infinite variations in… in…

"In," Bruce mused, looking up suddenly. "_IN_… There's going to be a third gift-clue and it will say 'IN.' IF-TINY-IN, Infinity. Clark what kind of targets are in town, any locations or special events that in some way relate to infinity?"

Superman stared.

"It could be literal," Bruce went on, trying to help, "like some connection to a famous mathematician, or it could be connected through a play on words of some kind."

Superman continued to stare, while Selina sat down next to Bruce and looked at him adoringly.

"Tell, tell," she said, assuming the prompt was self-explanatory: the great detective was to explain the brilliance of his deductions.

Bruce reached into his wallet and extracted the two construction paper Es. He laid them side-by-side on the table, and then picked up a chocolate.

"It's a ribbon," he said. "It's a chocolate _ribbon_. And the infinity symbol…" He paused and turned the one E around to face the other, then pushed them together until the ends overlapped, making a squarish sideways figure 8. "The infinity symbol is called a _lemniscate, _from the Latin _lemniscus_ meaning 'ribbon.'" He stopped again and chuckled as another clue leapt out at him with sudden clarity. "Remember the phrases that woman from housekeeping kept using: 'Clean items' and 'Me Cleans it' (I told you that accent was preposterous), they have exactly the same letters. I noticed at the time and wondered if it might be an anagram, but I couldn't see what of. That's it: 'Clean items,' 'Lemniscate,' the infinity symbol. And now In-If-Tiny. Whatever he's going to do, the clue is infinity."

"You're wonderful," Selina murmured, radiating loving admiration as she kissed his cheek.

Clark blushed, and drew a sharp mental line through his suspicions of a Catwoman-Riddler alliance.

* * *

100. A perfect 100. It wasn't easy, but there it was. One hundred rounds of Zogger expunged from his sentence.

Tim had made an interactive map/graph tied to a hidden spreadsheet that illustrated which states had which security features on their driver's licenses, so a researcher could tell at a keystroke who used holograms, barcodes, digital photographs, and slick combinations of these and other markers. Then you could plot that data against various alcohol-related crime statistics and even incorporate a calendar feature to see the spikes over Spring Break and other school holidays. It was a document tailor made to tickle Barbara at her All-Seeing Oracle's weakspot. It was a crime-obsessed computer geek's sex toy.

Tim had also, reluctantly, added library internet consoles to the list of uses New Jersey might have for that 12 million if they didn't have to improve their crappy driver's license. It stung a little, adding that line. But that ethical compromise didn't hurt half as much as the next step would: A perfect 100 on the research paper meant he had only one hundred Zogger rounds remaining to knock off his sentence. He was ready for Phase Two, and Phase Two was going to hurt. Literally.

* * *

"It's like Summer in Helsinki out there," Catwoman said dryly.

She was suited up, hands on hips, and staring out the bedroom window while Batman got changed. He checked the latch on his utility belt and double-checked the stress point on the grapnel launcher. Catwoman looked at the clock on the nightstand, then at the window again.

"I'm not joking, it's after 10:30. Is this really as dark as it's going to get?"

"Yes," he graveled, and crawled out the window.

Catwoman growled and followed. She had been to Metropolis before, of course, but mostly for daytime heists while the LexCorp offices were open. She certainly didn't remember this wattage fetish after sundown. The streetlights, theatre lights, brightly lit billboards, all so overdone that you felt the sun needn't have bothered going down at all.

"Woof," was all she could think to reply.

The next few hours were spent acclimating to the Metropolis rooftops. Batman had more experience in the city and far more in the immediate vicinity of the hotel, so he took the lead introducing her to the idiosyncrasies of particular buildings, the general layout of the downtown loop, and the key neighborhoods beyond. That much she could handle. He worked with Superman frequently; he stayed at the Four Seasons whenever he was in Metropolis, he knew the area better than she, he was taking the lead.

The train situation she was less sure about, at first. Those neighborhoods beyond the city center looked like a lot of distance to cover without the Batmobile, and she said so. Batman replied that they could "hitch a ride on the train, if necessary," and pointed to an elevated track like it was the simplest thing in the world. "Your whip won't be of much use," he went on, "but the grapnel attaches easily. So if we need to use that method in a hurry, you'll stick with me." She couldn't believe it. She thought he must be joking at first. Batman never joked about crimefighting, but it seemed like the only possible explanation. Hitching a ride on the _train_… Like _ Pheromones_?! Like _AzBat_?! Was he _insane_?! But then, before she could even find words to express her incredulous SHOCK, he'd grabbed her waist, fired a line, and before she could breathe they were speeding along, body to body, with his arms holding her tight, the rush of the wind in her hair and the thrilling speed of the train—And Catwoman admitted that there were worse ways to get across town as long as it was the real Batman at the helm and not some pheromonially-challenged pretender.

* * *

"Keep arm straight. Makes strong followthrough."

"This bites," Tim growled.

"Ten more, straight arm. No bite."

"It's a figure of speech, Cassie. It means this is a dumb exercise."

"Ten more. Keep arm straight."

Bruce was a cruel, cruel man. Tim didn't want to even think what the Justice League protocols must be like if this is what he came up with just for the fake ID. First, Oracle grades his research paper on the internet; and now, Cassie "taught to kill before she could walk" was giving him fighting lessons. This was so not cool. Why couldn't Bruce see that this was just not cool!

Tim had been taught to fight by Batman himself. Then he picked up a little more from Lady Shiva. Then Batman stepped in again when Robin got back from that adventure and corrected the Shiva stuff that he didn't like.

"Arm straight but now leg wobbly. Ten more."

The difference was that neither Bruce nor Lady Shiva were mad at him for not getting _them_ a fake ID and taking them along to a nightclub. It just wasn't cool! If it was Dick giving the lesson, then okay, Dick had been a dick about the cover-your-tracks/stand-up-to-Bruce stuff, but he was still a guy. He could respect the code. But Cassie…

"Weight too far forward. Easy kick you back."

He should have just let Hatter turn him into Tweedledee.

* * *

In the past, Batman/Catwoman team ups were not always been the smoothest of partnerships, but tonight's pre-adventure survey of Metropolis-by-rooftop was remarkably conflict-free… At least it had been until, ironically, they returned to the hotel.

Selina had wanted a shower, and when she returned to the bedroom, she found Bruce already changed into a thick terry robe and sifting through a packet of offerings from the concierge. Selina enjoyed pampering and indulgence as much as any cat, but she wasn't on vacation; she'd come to Metropolis to work. On a case. With Batman. Now, as he began pointing her to caviar facials and rose petal pedicures at the hotel spa, all the shopping right outside their door, and of course, the world famous art institute, she had the distinct impression that he was engaged in that most objectionable of "hero" behaviors: sending the little woman out of danger. She snarled accordingly.

"What is this, some travel protocol you cooked up for the bimbos? Send them off on some Julia Roberts fantasy so you can do whatever you came to town for undisturbed."

Bruce looked every bit as stunned and appalled as Catwoman had when he explained about the train-grapnel.

"Okay first, I never _traveled_ with the bimbos," he said sharply. "On a scale one to ten, one being an arbitrage meeting I can't duck out of and nine being that dungeon Ra's has at the castle in Budapest, the idea of being trapped on Wayne One or in this tiny suite with of one of those Bambis, Candis, or Jennis is a _thirty_. Those women were hard to take for a few hours at a party with a hundred other people. The very thought of going one-on-one for a week or more… But if, god forbid, I _did_ have to bring one of them to someplace like Metropolis for some reason and I said 'go shopping', you can bet they wouldn't have to be told twice. Makes my head spin to think how fast they'd go."

"I'm… sorry," Selina interrupted. "I said the wrong thing, I'm sorry. Blame it on all the pink." She gestured helplessly around the room. "But if you're not shunting me off to the side like a bimbo girlfriend, then what are you doing? Because we have plenty of spas and shopping in Gotham."

He took her chin in his one hand, and stroked her hair with the other.

"I wish I could say that I just like spoiling you, but this is work. We're still expecting the third clue. 'If' and 'Tiny' both came to you, in roundabout ways, the chocolate and the pussywillows. 'In' probably will to, and that means you need to be where he can get at you. You have to _be_ in Metropolis, Selina. Do all the things he would expect, knowing your likes and dislikes as he does. The art museum is a natural. The spa is an indulgence, and he does know we're staying here. The shopping is logical too, and it will give him plenty of opportunities to catch you alone."

"Then you're not sending me out of danger," Selina cried, flinging her arms around his neck and kissing him warmly.

"No, I'm not sending you out of danger," he laughed, stroking her face. "And aren't you the one who's always telling me he wouldn't hurt you?"

"He won't, but it's the principle of the thing."

"Be sure to go through the concierge for everything," he instructed. "Have her book the spa treatments for you, arrange a VIP tour at the museum, private viewings at the boutiques, lunch reservations, anything else you can think of. I'm not certain he has a spy in the building, but if he does, that will certainly help him track you."

"Pfft. Bruce, come on, this is _Eddie_. He would never want you to make it _easy_ for him."

"Easy?" came an unexpected Bat-gravel. "I've made it as difficult for him as humanly possible."

He smiled. Despite the unmasked face and hotel bathrobe, it was Batman who smiled, not an amused lip-twitch or a warm playboy grin, but a long, slow smile of deep and quiet menace.

"I've made it impossible for the Riddler to win, Selina… I brought you."

* * *

…to be continued…


	5. World's Finest Poor World

**Riddle Me-Tropolis**_  
Chapter 5: World's Finest (Poor World)_

* * *

It had finally happened. Selina was ready to admit she was wrong. Crimefighting… was okay.

She was in the Four Seasons Spa's "relaxation room," nestled behind a privacy curtain, enjoying a post-treatment snack. First, they had soaked her feet in rose petal milk. Then came the foot massage with damask rosewater and primrose oil, followed by a layer of rose petals applied to her legs, to be held in place by a wrap of deliciously hot towels. A hydrating facial was next, after which she was brought to this cozy little nook that reminded her of a miniature cat lair full of plush, comfy furnishings that seemed like oversized cat-toys. The attendant brought her the caviar canapé and glass of champagne included with her spa package, and Selina lay back, skin glowing, scented legs a-tingling, sipping, munching, and admitting finally that, if this was crimefighting, it wasn't all that objectionable.

"When is a waiter like a thwarted Gotham foe?" a familiar voice asked outside the curtain.

Selina laughed and pulled the curtain aside to reveal Edward Nigma dressed as a spa attendant and carrying a bottle of champagne.

"I've no idea, Eddie my pet. When is a waiter like a thwarted Gotham foe?"

"BAT FOOLED BY RHYME BLUR," he announced proudly, topping off her glass.

"That's the worst riddle I've ever heard," Selina said sourly.

"It means 'more champagne for the lady'," he explained with exaggerated dignity, defending his quip. Then he slipped a second glass out of his jacket, filled it, and sat down on the ottoman next to her.

"How you doing, Lina?" he asked warmly.

"Not bad. Why didn't you tell me you were leaving Gotham?"

"Didn't want to call you at home," he said, taking a drink. And then, feeling he should keep the question chain going, he asked, "What kind of treatment did you get?"

She explained about the rose petals, and he slapped his leg in delight.

"Hot damn, the massacre of the flora! Pammy'd hate that. I heard this place goes through 10,000 flowers a week, what with the arrangements in the lobby and all the rooms and stuff."

Selina laughed wickedly.

"Yes, she would hate it, wouldn't she. Added fun. Oh, that reminds me, thank you for the pussywillows."

He bent his head in an embarrassed 'aw shucks' move, then he looked up, as if expecting more.

"_And_ thank you for the chocolate," she added gamely.

He grinned and patted her leg.

"Nothing's too good for my girl."

Silence followed. Selina finished her champagne, and Eddie did likewise.

"So when do I get 'in'?" she said bluntly, trying to jumpstart the conversation.

"In?" he looked up sharply, a catch of awed hope in his voice.

"Clue number three," Selina purred, leaning forward seductively, and then pronounced the word like the sweetest of sins. "In."

Eddie's mouth dropped open.

"He knows it's an IN?" he exclaimed, practically singing.

"Shh, Eddie, keep your voice down."

"He knows it's an IN?" he repeated in an excited whisper.

"Of course he does. What did you expect?"

"How fast did he get it? Tell me, was it under an hour? I bet it was under an hour."

"I don't remember," Selina teased.

"It was! It was under an hour. Under a half hour?"

"Eddie, I was unpacking, I didn't have a stopwatch, okay?"

"Unpacking! You hadn't even unpacked! Fifteen minutes, wasn't it. He got it in fifteen minutes!"

Impulsively, he pulled Selina up from the chair, performed an abbreviated foxtrot turn and dipped her dramatically—then he froze, looking down into her astonished eyes as anagrams for "Here lies Edward Nigma" marched through his mind.

"Er, yes, well," he sputtered, as he awkwardly righted her, then put his hands firmly into his pockets. "Maybe best not to, eh… Don't tell him I did that."

"Y-yeah," Selina agreed slowly. "You got hold of yourself now, Eddie?"

_AWARDED REEL MIEN SIGH, AWARDED EEL HEM RISING, AWARDED REEL HINGE ISM…_

"Yeah, I'm good," he said finally, his voice cracking on the final word. Then he turned, finger raised in the air and a brilliant idea on his lips. "I've got it! When is a day in Metropolis like a—Oh screw it, blow off the shopping and come to lunch with me."

"Okay now _that's_ the worst riddle I've ever heard."

"Selina, come to lunch with me and I'll give you Clue Three."

"You're rhyming. Eddie, I have a firm rule about going along with anything you suggest in rhyme, and you know why."

"You looked _good_ in green, Lina."

"We agreed never to mention that."

"I know, but damn, woman. DOGGONE REIN"

"Eddie."

"DINE ROE GONG" he said, reaching for the last bead of caviar on the plate. "Be better if it was 'Dine roe _gone_' but we can't have everything. Mmm, love those fish eggs."

Selina giggled.

"You're a crazy man and nobody likes you," she declared playfully.

"Come on, Lina. You're supposed to go shopping next, right? Saks, St. John, Nicole Miller. Okay, let's say I grabbed you in the fitting room at Nicole Miller and spirited you across town. That way I can show you this great place I found. We'll have a nice afternoon and—"

"What the hell would you be doing in the fitting room at Nicole Miller?"

"Work with me, Lina. I'd be… kidnapping you, okay?"

"Kidnapping me? Eddie, I'd kick your ass," Selina pointed out frankly.

"They have hot chocolate."

"Excuse me?"

"The place I want to take you, Lois Lane told me about it. They have the best hot chocolate you've ever had in your life. And you've got a Nicole Miller in Gotham anyway, where they're not trying to fit these women that need a layer of blubber to get through the winter."

"I get hot chocolate?"

"Yes."

"And my 'IN' clue."

"Yes."

"And we'll be done by six? Because I think we've got theatre tickets."

"Word of OH NOR, back by six. Now c'mon, let's get there before the lunch rush."

* * *

As owner of the Daily Planet, Bruce knew he would have no problem entering any office or division he wished. Naturally, he would have to begin with Paula Winn, as a courtesy, despite her unfortunate tendency to panic whenever she met him. As the hotel-supplied limo speeded him along to Planet Square, Bruce pulled out his palm computer and read over Lucius's briefing email: _Paula Winifred Winn, employed Daily Planet for eighteen years, President and Publisher for the last six, Vice President and Executive Editor before that, headhunted from Los Angeles Times where she'd held the same title at considerably less salary. Married, husband Robert, was a lawyer at LexOil, now a partner at Levine and McNamara, no children. Birthday in September. Mother deceased last year, WE sent flowers. Member West River Country Club, good tennis player, poor golfer. Board member Science and Industry Museum, season subscriber and donor to Metropolis Opera and several theatres, although these appear to be a function of her status as chief executive at the DP. She does not actually attend performances._

Bruce scanned the text, although he'd read it all before. Paula Winn was unique among the executives who ran his holdings in that she alone proved immune to his protocols to alleviate panic when he paid a visit. He'd met her eight times since acquiring the Planet, and each meeting was as awkward as the last. He'd already tried engaging her in small talk about L.A., tennis, golf, her husband's law practice, the science museum, and even the opera and theatre despite the foreknowledge that her interest in the last was only for show. Absolutely nothing penetrated that jittery aura of terror she projected that was so reminiscent of a person succumbing to Scarecrow toxin.

Still, Mrs. Winn was the head of the Daily Planet organization and it would be unthinkable for him to just drop in at the reporters' bullpen without at least checking in with her. The limo pulled into Planet Square and Bruce steeled himself for the ordeal to come.

* * *

Everyone has a few "hotspots" in their perception. Certain words leap out, no matter how softly uttered or how briefly passed, certain sounds emerge from the otherwise inaudible burr of a busy newsroom. For Clark Kent, his wife's voice—a sudden change in the tone of his wife's voice—was one such hotspot. Clark wasn't even aware that he heard her… six cubicles away, on the phone, browbeating the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan… not until the tone shift. One moment there was high indignation, a moral imperative to defy the gag order when even the Red Cross and Amnesty International were appea— and then, before the Red Cross and Amnesty International could complete their appeal, her voice was all warm honey and silvery pleasure.

"Well hello there, Bossman. That is one fine, fine suit you're wearing."

Clark's fingers froze on the keyboard. Everyone had their own strategy at this point to deal with Perry's nicotine withdrawal. Whenever that office door swung open, the whole bullpen froze waiting to hear if the cry was "STOP THE PRESSES!" or "If I don't get some red meat and a stogie in the next thirty seconds, everyone's fucking dead!"

"You know a man who can dress himself is a very sexy thing," the Lois-honey dripped on.

But the office door _hadn't_ swung open, Clark realized sharply, and if the thought of Lois "vamping" Perry was just bizarre enough for Mxyzptlk to come up with…

"Is that Armani?"

…even that fifth dimensional pixie couldn't warp reality enough to make Perry White's _wardrobe_ the focus of her praise.

"Gieves and Hawkes, actually," an equally honeyed but far more masculine voice answered, and the truth sunk in. It was a different "bossman" Lois was flirting with, one she _always_ flirted with when he came to the Planet, one who did get his suits on Savile Row.

Clark could have looked through the wall of his cubicle to follow the action, but it seemed more polite to stand. Sure enough, there was Bruce leaning over Lois's desk, that glib playboy grin on his face while Lois fondled his tie—which wasn't Armani _either_ he said, but Hermes. Clark relocated to his wife's desk, putting on the same mock knock-it-off-you-two manner he always assumed when they did this. He knew they were just playing with him of course…

"Good to see you again, Bruce," he announced, as if he really felt the exact opposite.

…He was assuming Bruce was there to see him, so he suggested a quick tour of the newsroom. It would give them a chance to talk privately, and it would take him off Paula Winn's hands before the poor woman had a heart attack. Clark didn't need his super-senses to notice she was white as Bruce's shirt (which _was_ Armani. Lois finally got one right, she was _so_ pleased.) While Clark had often seen _Batman_ produce that effect, the alarming pallor suggesting no blood pressure at all, belied by the subsonic pulmonary roar of a panic attack, it was always deliberate. But this was Bruce, not Batman, and he didn't seem to be doing anything to inspire terror. He was only telling Paula Winn that he'd like Lois (or rather "that plucky go-getter Ms. Lane") to take over his tour of the Planet's many divisions and departments, while Lois said she'd be delighted to show him around (or rather "hobnob with the rich and hunky.")

Bruce and Batman…

"No offense, Kent, but if I'm going to look around the office, I'd much rather it be your wife on my arm."

…Clark had an epiphany…

"And what an arm, Bruce. I can see I'll have to stretch this out. Not just going to show you the Metro desk, Sports and Leisure. You're going to getting the full tour."

…Clark remembered when the two of them began this routine, in the early days before he and Lois were even married. It always struck him then that _Bruce,_ who thought nothing of flirting with Lois only to nettle him, was also Batman, who was so famously discombobulated by Catwoman's suggestive teasing…

"I can think of nothing that I'd enjoy more. And have I mentioned that you're my favorite writer, I can't get enough of your wonderful profile."

…It also occurred to him that the situation with Catwoman had changed dramatically since that time…

"You mean profile like 'a conversation with Madeleine Albright', or looking at me sideways?"

"Why both, of course."

…Bruce and Lois hadn't changed their routine, but _he_ certainly had an option to respond that he'd never had before.

* * *

Yes, Selina would have to admit it, crimefighting did not suck. She was sipping a concoction of 2/3 hot chocolate, 1/3 hot fudge. Eddie didn't want to ruin the consistency of the homemade marshmallows, so he just handed her a slip of paper with a question mark. They both agreed that since he _could_ have arranged for her to find it IN-side the marshmallow, they would simply decide between them that that's what happened.

"So Lois told you about his place?" Selina asked, peering curiously at his tart covered with caramel-crusted pretzels.

"Yes, she's the super one in this town as far as I'm concerned. Gave me a whole list of places geared to feeding humans rather than fattening up grizzly bears for the winter."

Selina laughed.

"I'm not joking. You don't want to know what they do to hot dogs out at that ballpark."

Selina laughed harder.

"Lina! It's not funny, stop laughing. I put a riddle-solving tutorial up on the scoreboard in the middle of a ballgame, still nothing. They don't even mention it in that socalled newspaper of theirs. What are they going to say, hm? SUPERMAN A NO SHOW. LANE SAVES SELF."

A wet snorting grunt followed.

"Eddie, so help me, if you make me blow hot chocolate through my nose…"

"The man's a moron, that's all I'm saying," he concluded lamely.

"Well, for what it's worth, I've seen him, and he does know you're in town now. That should help matters… I think he even considered the possibility that we're working together."

* * *

The Daily Planet was important to Metropolis, and Bruce took his responsibility seriously as the owner and steward of an icon. Batman was interested in one office only, in one line item on one record in one database in one office. Another type of man might have viewed the whole tour of the newswires and media center, the various divisions within the reporter bullpen, Circulation, Printing, and IT as a tiresome charade he must endure to get to that one moment of discovery, but Bruce was not that kind of man. He took an interest in all the areas he saw, and was particularly patient with the boys in IT who were a bit starstruck at the actual head of WayneTech standing right there in front of their cubicle (and fulsome in their admiration of the new WayneTech systems installed last year) …Lois bore it all patiently and finally brought Bruce to the division Batman was interested in: Advertising.

Bruce asked a few questions on the pretext of seeing how a new corporate account might be set up to accommodate several large ad buys on short notice. As the obliging clerk showed him the process, he was able to see that the full-page "Riddle Me-Tropolis" ad was placed by Nonnenum Enterprises. He grunted, softly; Batman had what he'd come for, and that was all he could do until he "met Clark Kent for lunch."

* * *

Eddie dropped his fork.

"To- Together? Us?? Us like 'you and me,' us? Lina, you're kidding. He thought we might be working _together_?"

He considered this, a pleased glint in his eye. Perhaps he'd misjudged Superman. Anyone who could entertain a notion like that.

"Eddie, close your mouth; you'll catch flies."

"Oh, eh, I mean, er, yeah. Heh. What an idea, right? Me and you. Heh. Heheh."

He went back to rapt contemplation of this dream team-up. A clever bit of misdirection, Catwoman distracting the heroes, leading them on a merry chase, while he absconded with the prize… Selina did her best to ignore her companion's reverie and signaled for the check.

"I'll get this," she said, pulling out her wallet and fully intending to leave him there if he didn't pull himself together.

"Want to try it?" he said suddenly. "Just think of it. I've got a primo target all lined up. Priceless. Perfect for you. Completely Catworthy!"

"Eddie, Come on, you know I can't."

"Can't? CAN'T? There's not _can't_ in _cat_! This is Catwoman we're talking about. Come on! Oh Lina, _come on_, just think of it. It'll be _fun_."

She smiled kindly, obviously pleased at the suggestion and the temptation it offered. Then…

"Eddie… I came with him."

"I know… Doesn't mean you have to leave with him, does it?"

She shook her head sadly.

"Well I tried," he said, making the best of it.

"You knew what the answer would be – or you would have told me what the target is."

"Clever woman. That's my curse you know. Clever… women…" He looked thoughtful… worried… and then, spoke the unspeakable fear, "I'm not going to face you on the other side of this caper, am I Selina?"

She hissed. No amount of rose petal pedicures, caviar or chocolate could compensate for a friend like Eddie asking a question like that. Crimefighting SUCKED!

"I'll have you know Catwoman robbed a bank in New Zealand!" she announced fiercely.

* * *

The Wayne/Kent "lunch" was really Batman meeting Superman at STAR Labs for a quick walkthrough of the facility that Bruce was sure had been Nigma's original target. He disliked appearing as Batman in daylight, but it was necessary. As the owner of their biggest competitor, Bruce Wayne was _ persona non grata_ at STAR Labs. But Superman they were always happy to welcome, along with any Justice League colleagues.

Happy to _welcome_ them, perhaps, but Batman could see at once that they were not exactly forthcoming. At first, he attributed the subtle cues to nerves. STAR had evidently registered them coming in on radar eight minutes before their arrival. Unannounced Superman drop-ins were common enough and they'd had similar visits from Batman, albeit less frequently. However, registering both Superman AND Batman coming in _together_ apparently put the whole place on high alert. The heroes had arrived to find a Dr. Emil Hamilton waiting at the gate with assurances that all current research and active projects were on hold and all staff at their stations at the ready. All assumed the space-time continuum must be seconds from disintegration and the World's Finest heroes needed some cosmic whatchamajig from the STAR vault to stabilize it. When it turned out the heroes just wanted to check out the facility, everyone went back to work and, theoretically, everything went back to "normal." But the staff was still on edge; it was understandable.

That's what Batman told himself for ten minutes.

Dr. Hamilton had been assigned to show them through the facility, he was the researcher with whom Superman evidently had the closest working relationship. Dr. Hamilton wasn't a sociopath, a supervillain, a lawyer, or a politician. As such, he simply wasn't a very good _liar_. Like any detective, Batman was adept at reading body language, tone, and manner. Once his suspicions were aroused, he noted peculiar choices of words and phrasing that hinted at subjects a person was trying to avoid. Batman met Superman's eyes, confirming that he was aware of the situation. Superman's senses could detect all the subtle changes in heart rate, blood pressure, and body temperature that occur when a normal person lies. The only question was if he'd noticed. Meeting Superman's eyes now, there was no doubt that he had.

The heroes had vastly different approaches to a situation like this. Batman's was direct. He would have slammed Hamilton against the wall and asked point blank what the custodians of Phantom Zone technology, twelve varieties of kryptonite, a JLA transporter, and a Martian fusion reactor were trying to hide from the people who entrusted them with it! But it was Superman's town, he knew Hamilton better and he had a working rapport with the man. His approach would be more effective under the circumstances, so Batman remained silent while Superman proceeded to kill the guy with kindness.

First, he told Batman (although Batman was well aware) about all that STAR had done for him over the years, identifying kryptonite initially and analyzing the various forms and their properties, advising him on other Kryptonian artifacts and technology as it was discovered, and really assisting on everything of a scientific nature that he'd encountered. They even provided specialized medical care for himself and his cousin… Batman nodded appreciatively, as he would at League meetings where the 'discussion' was a pointless formality and the outcome of the vote a foregone conclusion. Then Superman segued to addressing Dr. Hamilton directly. While many of the faces had changed over the years, Hamilton was there at STAR from the beginning, from Superman's very first visit. He asked aloud if Hamilton remembered that day (as if anyone _didn't_ remember meeting Superman for the first time!). It gave STAR such an aura of continuity and stability, he said. He knew this was an organization he could really trust – "because of its people, Hamilton, because of its people."

Batman stood passively off to the side, marveling at the spectacle. He knew that Superman (and just about everyone he knew, really) would have thought the Bat-approach brutal and vicious, in every way inferior to Superman's way, all smiling sweetness and light. But really, who was the sadist? Hamilton had been reduced to a writhing shell of guilt and shame, he was ready to break four minutes ago, and if Batman had just slammed him against the wall, the poor man could have yelled "Okay okay, I'll tell you the truth" and that would have been the end of his (far less agonizing) torment right there. But because this resembled a morality play more than an interrogation, he had to wait, squirming on under the weight of his suffering, until Superman gave him an opening to unburden himself. Their tour continued, through the computer center, through the chemical and polymer laboratories, through the nanite and nanobite labs, and through the research center for Non-Terran protein chemistry, peptide chemistry, regeneration, molecular biology and biopharmaceuticals. No opening came for Dr. Hamilton to admit whatever he was hiding, and at the entrance to the final high-security core, Batman could take it no longer. He changed the subject:

"Did I tell you the Riddle Me ad was taken out by Nonnenum Enterprises? _Nonne_ and _num_ are both Latin prefixes."

Dr. Hamilton perked up considerably at this information. As a scientist, he'd had more than enough Latin to tell them what Batman obviously knew already: the term _nonne_ introduced a question expecting the answer 'yes;' _num_ came before a question expecting the answer 'no.'"

"Is that significant?" Superman asked.

"Not especially," Batman admitted. "But it might have been. It was worth checking. It does tell us that he was in a whimsical mood at that point."

"Nothing to do with his present scheme though?"

"No, it has nothing to do with infinity, but it is an insight. When he began this, he was playful. Nonnenum Enterprises, he's amusing himself. Since it's unlikely anyone would ever go looking up the information, it's there only as a private joke."

"Just trying to see inside his head, without benefit of X-ray vision," Superman quipped.

Batman shot him a disgusted glare.

"Which is why we're here," he graveled, "even though STAR is probably _not_ the present target. While much of the Phantom Zone and other cross-dimensional technology is tied to quantum physics, high level mathematics and metaphysics, it's unlikely he'd return to a target when his first try was such a disappointment."

Superman noted the continued undercurrent of blame, as if failing to provide an intellectual challenge for the villain was some kind of character flaw. But his reaction was preempted by Dr. Hamilton, who snatched at these fragments of conversation and transformed from shamed caitiff into a man.

"…really should have told you at once…soon as you arrived…" he began hesitantly, then built in confidence and fluency as he continued. "We had a break in several nights ago, and a researcher working late was attacked by an intruder he never saw."

"And you never reported it?" Batman barked.

Hamilton took a deep breath.

"We prefer not to admit police to the facility if we can avoid it," he explained. "Superman will certainly appreciate that when Lex Luthor was mayor, our position became… precarious. Even before that development… We have a great deal of priceless proprietary data on site, in addition to the Phantom Zone and Watchtower access, and all the kryptonite. And we have found that police detectives simply do not accept that there are places within the facility where we dare not give them access. Since this break in occurred in an unimportant office in the least secured wing of the building, and the researcher, as I said, never saw his attacker…"

Batman growled contemptuously, but his disapproval was for show. The truth was that he would do the same if WayneTech found itself broken into that way. Nevertheless, Batman and Superman would inspect the office that was compromised and questioned the researcher who was attacked.

* * *

Examining the office that was broken into – and then every other office in the administrative wing, which may or may not have been breached, there was no way to tell without investigating – was a dull and time-consuming effort. It gave Superman a chance to ask the questions that had been plaguing him for some time.

He didn't understand the Riddler; the whole concept baffled him. He certainly had villains enough bragging _after the fact_: "I've just exchanged the entire populations of Thiallin-2 and BizzaroWorld, behold the carnage!" He'd had villains enough challenge him _during the act itself_: "I'm going to crush you into powder and the whole world will know that I'm the one who beat Superman!" But the whole idea of sending "clues" to heroes and police beforehand? If you were going to rob a bank, wouldn't going up to the guard, showing him your gun and telling him that in two minutes, you were going to shove it in a teller's face and ask for all the cash in the drawers be… counterproductive?

"Only if you see the cash in the drawer as the goal," Batman explained. "With Riddler, it's rarely about the crime itself; his particular pathology is about intellectual superiority, about outsmarting the police, the hero, everyone."

"Thumbing your nose at the world and getting away with anything you want because the rest of humanity is too stupid to figure you out?"

"Correct. It's not about the crime, per se; it's about the game, the matching of wits."

"I get that part, I just don't see why. What's the benefit? What does he gain?"

Batman shook his head.

"You're thinking like Luthor, it's – scratch that, thinking _of_ Luthor, where his 'intellectual superiority' is a means to an end: more money, more power, destroying the Alien, all of it is personal gain. He's a star athlete who hones his skills because he wants the million dollar contract with the Meteors, the product endorsements and the fast cars. Riddler just wants to win the game."

"So he proves that he's smarter than you? So what? What's the point?"

"You mean what's the point in winning a game if you're not a paid professional athlete? It's just like all those guys who show up in Metropolis, picking a fight just to prove that they can beat Superman."

"Same field, different sport?" Superman said with a laugh.

"Yes, all born of the same insecurities, the same need for attention and validation of their superiority. Look at it this way: Luthor and Nigma are both fiercely intelligent men, that's not a delusion; it's a fact. In Luthor's case, he achieved tremendous material success with his gifts. There was no sore spot from seeing men with far less ability achieve far more wealth and power. So he focuses on something else, he becomes obsessed with a distinction he can never buy and can never attain with his natural gifts."

"Me."

"You."

"Whereas Nigma grows up knowing he's the smartest kid in the class, and sees the ditzy cheerleader become a cosmetics queen and the dumb football player become a movie star?"

"Something like that," Batman grunted, kneeling to inspect a doorknob and lock that might have been tampered with.

"You do realize you just described a man whose entire criminal career is motivated by anger over an injustice?"

Batman rose – presumably because his inspection of the door was complete. He placed a bat-shaped emblem marker on the lock for fingerprinting and further examination… but for a split second, Superman had the distinct impression that, if it wasn't for the certainty of shattering his hand, Batman was about to punch him in the mouth.

* * *

The Metropolis Art Institute had one of the finest Impressionist collections in the country and Selina fully intended to go inside and visit a few favorite masterpieces before she left town. But today's visit, she and Eddie remained outside, sitting on the steps under one of the magnificent bronze lions which flanked the main entrance.

"Got it! WOW, I AM CAT KIN! That's your anagram for Kiwi Catwoman. Like it?"

"Much better than the WACKO TWIN one, yes."

"I told you, I was just warming up. It was all that sugar from the chocolate tart."

"Mhm. Sure."

Eddie looked up at the massive lion and pondered "I wonder if your wacko twin in kiwi-land would like to team up with me?" Selina playfully smacked the back of his head. Then he wondered if the New Zealand Cat would object to wearing green, and Selina smacked again but he ducked. Finally, he looked back at Selina and, for the first time, made reference to her T-shirt. She'd been wearing the shirt with a dramatic close up of a beautiful Bengal tiger since they left the spa, and Eddie was torn about mentioning it.

"That's a mighty big tiger," he said at last.

"Why thank you," she grinned, stretching it downward for a better look.

"One of your new ones?"

At first, a puzzled grin was the only response.

"How did you know about that?"

"How indeed? Maybe he's not taking very good care of you, Lina. Not looking after your secrets as well as he keeps his own, not that he does such a stellar job there, either."

"They're not missile codes, Eddie, they're tigers. It's not exactly a state secret."

"Maybe not, but come on. The guy's got more money than a small country and you're shacking up with him. Does make you a target, you know. Somebody like me finds out about something like this, it'd be real easy to make contact. Call up the manor pretending to be some vet from STAR Labs –your phone number was right there, Lina, right on a Post-it. Wayne Manor and a phone number. Payday! Call up, pose as some veterinary specialist with news about your tigers, set up a meeting, lure you… eh, any…where."

His impassioned monologue ground to a halt as he saw the gaze of impossible astonishment crossed with impossible fury.

"You know, now that I say it out loud, it sounds pretty stupid… It's the crosswords. Lina, the crosswords are getting to me. Did you see what 4 Down was this morning? A 7-letter word for stereo accessory. SPEAKER! Now if you've got a stereo for the sole purpose of listening to music, aren't speakers kind of mandatory? I don't call that an optional accessory, I consider that part of your stereo. Speakers plural, by the way, because stereo means it's playing stereophonic sound, minimum of two channels, what good is one speaker? Hm? That's how it starts, Lina. You start putting aside what you _ know_ is true to make some answer fit the clue, and pretty soon you start thinking a speaker really is an optional accessory for you freakin' stereo, and the next thing you know, you don't realize that anybody trying to lure Bruce Wayne's girlfriend to some isolated kidnap spot with a story about Catitat tigers is a MAD TO DIE FOOL doomed to fail."

"Sorry," Eddie concluded meekly. "That was what Dr. Bartholomew would call 'an episode.'"

* * *

Finding nothing more at STAR Labs, Batman and Superman left for the Fortress of Solitude to examine the one clue that remained: a video camera left at the planetarium sundial.

Batman had arrived at the Fortress many times and it always went pretty much the same way. There was a lot of snarling and growling, a baring of teeth driven by a super-powered jaw, and entirely too much "there there, easy fella"-ing from Superman, followed by assurances that "he really does like you, he's just excited to have company."

So much for the "Superman doesn't lie" theory, Bruce thought sourly. Maybe _Superman_ didn't, but Clark did and always about that dog. Krypto didn't _like_ anybody that came to the fortress – except, irony of ironies, Selina. Clark had brought her to stay with Lois when the League wives and loved ones were threatened after the Dibny murder. She returned talking about the "over-friendly wondermutt" that apparently licked her face and pawed her hair throughout her stay. Bruce never told her that her experience with Superman's dog flying around, following her everywhere she went, and generally trying to become her new best friend was – to put it mildly – an _unusual_ one. He didn't think she'd appreciate the irony.

Superman brought the video camera, the box and wrapping it came in, and a photograph of the package in its original, unopened condition.

"I was just thinking" he began while Batman inspected the items. "If we knew why he came to Metropolis in the first place, it might point us in the right direction."

Batman said nothing but appeared to scrutinize the video camera. Clark tried again.

"I know it's not unheard of for villains to change cities every now and then, but why here? Why now? There must be a reason."

Batman appeared to read the fine print on the camera casing, informing the owner that no user-serviceable parts were contained within and opening the sealed panel invalidated the warranty.

"Don't you think it might tell us what he's after if we knew why he came here?"

Batman withdrew an atomizer from his utility belt, spritzed the camera, and then examined it with a bat-shaped lens.

"Bruce? Any idea why he's come to Metropolis?"

Batman set down camera, atomizer and lens with a weary sigh.

"It's entirely possible that Riddler isn't 'targeting' Metropolis at all, Clark. It may simply be that the sole point of attraction for this city is that it's not Gotham."

Clark considered this. There was only one reason he knew that drove Batman villains to seek out "not Gotham" as a destination.

"You mean like in January?"

Bruce froze for a moment, then turned to stare directly at him. A cold silence stretched through agonizing seconds and then he finally spoke.

"Yes."

He explained briefly about Edward Vaniel, the investigation that followed the dying man's shocking revelation, and the… _unfortunate_ timing of Riddler's Midnight Express crime coming only hours after the hospital visit. At first, Clark's only response was dumbstruck astonishment. He couldn't seem to say anything, or even form a thought to express, however inarticulately. In an attempt to ease the situation, Bruce mentioned a detail from that curious epilogue with Vaniel's son David. After a long night in the ICU, essentially waiting for his father to die, the one detail the young man recalled with such clarity was a tapeloop on the 24-hour news channel repeating footage of Superman every twenty minutes. It must be very gratifying, Bruce concluded, to know your persona has such positive connotations that, even in such removed circumstances, in can somehow give people comfort.

Bruce knew this was not the way Clark thought of himself, and the foreign thought did snap him out of his dumbstruck haze. Now that his friend was tracking again, Bruce fully expected the next question to be an aggrieved "Why didn't you call me?" but instead, Clark merely looked him in the eye and asked if he was okay.

"Yes," Bruce answered honestly. "More 'okay' than I've been in quite some time, actually."

Clark nodded.

"Thought there was something. When you got in yesterday I thought you seemed a little more…well, I'd never use the words 'laid back' when it comes to you… but I could see that something was different, in a good way…"

Bruce pointed abruptly at the camera.

"There are markings on the lens," he said gruffly. "You were meant to 'pan' 4 degrees, 4 minutes, 4 seconds clockwise from some point, presumably the 7 o'clock position on the sundial, and then zoom in."

He looked up, and saw that Clark wasn't listening. He wasn't even looking at the camera, he was looking at Bruce with that 'proud papa' grin.

"Don't," he warned.

"It's good to see, that's all."

Bruce glared. And Clark did, finally, turn his attention to the camera.

"But there's no way that thing was going to zoom in on STAR Labs from the Planetarium. I checked the full 360, it's not on the horizon."

"No, that only would have pointed you to a decoy. The real clue is this 'Pan then zoom' on the wrapping paper."

"Another anagram?"

"Phantom Zone."

"See, I'm catching on… Except I still don't understand sending the chocolates and pussywillows."

"I told you, they're friends."

"Bruce, _I _consider Selina a friend, but I don't give her candy and flowers."

"No, you gave her tigers."

Clark said something in reply, but Bruce didn't hear him. He held up a finger as he concentrated on the timeline.

"The tigers – Come on, we're going back to STAR Labs. Now!"

* * *

The view from the Skydeck above the former LexCorp towers was certainly the most magnificent in the Midwest. They say on a clear day you can see into four different states. They say on a clear day you can see fifty miles in any direction. They say on a clear day, Lex Luthor would make a full lap from this office to his penthouse and back again, scouring the horizon and snarling like a rabid beast, always expecting his perfect view to be spoiled by those bright streaks of red and blue…

"How do you think he did it?" Eddie asked, scoping out the horizon. "Luthor was a smart guy and he lived here; never seemed to make him terminally stupid."

"That's a matter of opinion," Selina purred. "He hired me for a job and then tried to renege on paying for it."

Eddie chuckled.

"Okay that is asking for pain, I'll admit. What did you do, scratch it out of him?"

"No need. He had me stealing some plans off his _ personal computer_."

"Jennifer Jigsaw, you mean all you had to do was transfer the funds out of his account into yours?"

"Meow."

"Was this from his office or his penthouse?"

"Office. Luckily I never had to set foot in the quarters Lexie called home." She looked down at her feet, realizing they were on the penthouse side of the Skydeck. "Not until now," she added with a grin.

"Well then, let us proceed along yonder _cat_walk to his former office, or as your hero friends refer to it, THEFT ENCORE SHE…MICE."

"The scene of the crime?" Selina guessed.

"The scene of the crime. Oh, for a woman who can keep up!"

They crossed to the office side of the Skydeck, and Selina indicated where Luthor's desk had been.

"Was his password at least hard to crack?" Eddie asked hopefully.

"No."

"Was it at least interesting?"

"His social security number with the date of the Norman conquest in the middle."

"Oh man. Kitty, You must've been bored out of your mind."

"I was. Getting into the building was even easier. I don't think he'd been here that long, and his so-called security was a joke. So I tripped the alarm to add a little excitement to the escape."

"Oh yes, I'm sure going up against Big, Blue, and Brainless was an electrifying thrill."

"Might have been," Selina trilled with a naughty grin, "But I lucked out. Batman was in town, I got'em both."

"Ah."

"Was very meow."

"Figures."

* * *

There's nothing quite as unnerving as having Batman point at your nose yelling "YOU" followed by some order, no matter how reasonable that order might be. **_"YOU! Put this office back exactly the way it was the night of the break in"_** had so paralyzed Dr. Hamilton's assistant, she wasn't any help whatsoever, and Superman had to spend ten minutes on damage control while Hamilton himself pulled the files and bulletins that would have been out that week. He also noted that a crate of corroded nozzles were on that table, waiting for pickup the next morning, and the freshly refilled watercooler was nearly empty.

Batman scanned the reset office as if absorbing vibrations from the scene, until—

"INCOMING!" Superman's voice rang out.

Batman snapped into defensive mode, while Superman scanned the room with far less focus than Batman's pointed intensity. He hadn't said it. Both heroes looked around with ever-decreasing alarm. Absolutely nothing was 'incoming'… Absolutely nothing was happening at all… After a few moments of consideration, Batman returned his attention to the office and specifically the items on the desk and tacked onto the bulletin board. Superman continued to scan, now looking into and through the walls, his puzzlement growing. He hadn't said anything. Was some kind of alternate Superman leaking through a time warp or—

"INCOMING!" sounded again.

This time Batman bent his head, concealing a lip-twitch, then turned and walked brusquely out of the room and peeked into the next office. Superman followed, and peered into the office. He saw the same thing Batman did, a low-level researcher sitting at his desk.

"It's his email alert," Batman said gruffly. "Probably plucked it from the news coverage of that skirmish over Honduras last year."

He returned to the office. Superman followed – more flustered than ever.

"It just… I mean, it's a little weird," he said finally. "Okay, sure, these guys are all technical people so I'm sure it's nothing new to them…"

"Your email alert is still the default beep, isn't it?"

"Wh-what? What do you mean?"

Batman shook his head.

"Nothing. Never mind."

He walked deliberately to the desk and seemed to scan its surface—although he was really looking for a particular item. His eyes narrowed when he found it, and he handed it wordlessly to Superman. The Man of Steel looked down at a folder of photographs, weight charts, veterinary reports and dietary records for six Bengal tigers that he and Batman had fought in the Dhumavati death maze, and which he himself had campaigned, cajoled, and bartered for Selina to take in at her preserve.

"What does this mean?" he asked, reading a new concern in Batman's manner. "You think he knows about the tigers?"

"He may. It's a possibility."

They said no more in front of the STAR staff but quickly relocated to the top of the Daily Planet building where they could speak freely. Then Superman asked again.

"Okay, if he knows Selina has the tigers at her preserve, so what? What does it mean?"

"I've been assuming he was challenging me. What if he's not? What if he wasn't sending clues to Batman at all? What if he was announcing to Bruce Wayne and his girlfriend that they were his next targets? Suppose he's not intending to go up against Batman at all, Clark. He's _still_ in Metropolis. Suppose he's still going up against _you_."

"But he brought you here!"

"Yes! Probably to _explain_ the clues to you. He wasn't getting anywhere with the usual method."

"Well that's not encouraging. Do you think Selina is in danger?"

Bruce's lip twitched as he heard Selina's "Pffft" sound deep in the recesses of his memory.

"No. I don't claim to understand their 'friendship' but… I do accept it. You know the villains who pretend to be so open and cordial, the 'just because we're on opposite sides there's no need to be hostile' attitude. Imagine two of them, playing off each other all day, with no interference from any tightass crimefighters that won't play along."

"Let's say you're right, that she's not in danger but that you or she are the target. What do either of you – or those tigers – have to do with infinity?"

Bruce thought… and thought… and thought.

"The Foundation funded Dr. Leiverman's work on string theory," he said finally. "It's unlikely Nigma would know anything about that, or care. There is no way he could 'get at it' just by luring Selina and I to Metropolis, and there's no way he could profit from it if he did get his hands on it. Even if none of that were true, it still wouldn't work as a Riddler clue. To satisfy his sense of fair play, I or the Foundation would have to be _ associated_ with Leiverman's work. We'd have to be _known_ for funding string theory research, when in fact, the Wayne Foundation is known for anything but."

"Any other possible connections?"

Bruce thought again… and thought… and thought.

"No."

"I didn't think so. I'm afraid we're back to the obvious, my friend. He brought you here from Gotham because you're his preferred chess opponent, and I only play Scrabble.

Batman glowered, then checked his watch.

"I have to go. We have theatre tickets."

* * *

The Koul-Brau Palace. In 1926, the Palace Theatre opened at the corner of Cassidy and Nowak Streets in the heart of the downtown loop. Designed by legendary theatre architects the Rapp Brothers, the interior featured a splendor previously unseen in Metropolis, a breathtaking vision inspired by the palaces of Fontainebleau and Versailles. Falling into disrepair over the decades, it was renovated in the late 1990s by Koul-Brau Breweries, a wholly-owned LexCorp subsidiary, with the unfortunate result that Lex Luthor's own French Empire tastes became the driving force of the restoration, adding a layer of Napoleonic pretension onto the already over-gilded design: breche, violet, and white marble swept majestically through a succession of lobbies and foyers; great wall surfaces trimmed with gold leaf and wood decorations; all of it enhanced by huge decorative mirrors to make it all seem even bigger… To a Gothamite like Bruce, accustomed to opulence balanced with taste and restraint, it was all a bit much.

He'd been shown to one of the plush private boxes, took his seat and began leafing through the playbill while he waited for Selina. In the past, whenever he'd attended a cultural event in Metropolis, the experience was always soured by the proliferation of LexCorp subsidiaries advertising in the program: LexOil, LexAir and SuperStation WLEX, Metropolis Mercantile Bank, Commerce Bank of Metropolis and First Metro Security, the Good Foods Group, Ralli's Family Restaurants and naturally the Koul-Brau Breweries. Only the last remained even though the company itself was now defunct, some contractual obligation left over from the restoration. The Koul-Brau Palace had to go on calling itself that for another 75 years, and would go on running this ad in its playbill for another 25. As for the rest of the ads, well, Bruce was happy to see WayneTech and the Daily Planet doing their bit to support the arts, but he would have liked to see more family-owned businesses in amongst the corporate patrons. Metropolis _was_ emerging from Luthor's dark shadow, but the progress seemed very slow and hesitant. They were not recovering their identity as quickly as he'd hoped.

He felt his cell phone vibrate. Assuming it was Selina, he'd answered without checking the caller ID and was surprised to hear Clark's voice instead.

..: You realize that's Luthor's box you're sitting in:.. he teased, and Bruce realized it was really the JLA communicator inside his phone that had signaled an incoming call.

Bruce looked around, and saw the walls were all decorated with gilded friezes, reproductions of those on the Arc de Triomph (typical Luthor). He reached over and scratched the gilt with his fingernail to reveal a darker metal beneath the gold leaf.

"Lead in the walls?" he assumed.

..: I assume so. I followed you through the lobby, saw them tear your ticket, point you up the stairs, usher took you down the hallway, then you disappeared into the wall. Luthor's famous 'privacy issues,' there are pockets of them all over the city.:..

Bruce grunted.

"I told you there's no need to keep watch."

..: I just figured I'd stick around until Selina shows. I want to see what she's wearing.:..

Bruce pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it for a moment.

..: Oh! And speak of the devil, there she is. Just getting out of a cab now. Oh. Oh my. That is some dress.:..

Bruce continued to regard his phone with a hostility usually reserved for Joker henchmen. Didn't he have enough riddles to deal with right now?

..: Anyway, guess I should be going. You two enjoy your night. Be sure to tell Selina how much I like her dress.:..

* * *

…to be continued…


	6. Curtain Time

**Riddle Me-Tropolis**_  
Chapter 6: Curtain Time_

* * *

There was a joke in the Princeton physics department: How can you tell if a scientist is an extrovert? He looks at _your_ shoes when he talks to you.

It was true. And it made a man like Harold Avies a perfect spy. Well, not a _spy_ exactly, but a courier and delivering something more significant and valuable on this one night than most spies tote around in their whole career—Harold guessed; he had no way of knowing about spies. He was a doctoral candidate in theoretical physics, not an expert in international espionage. What he knew about spies, he knew from the movies. And he was pretty sure what he knew was bunk. A spy shouldn't be some suave, handsome James Bond-type; he'd be remembered. Roger Moore walks into an empty teahouse behind a brothel in Kamphaeng Phet and the lady says "Ohhhh, Simon Templar, usual table?"

You didn't want that in a secret agent. You wanted someone who'd blend in, someone like Harold Avies. Thirty-odd people could have seen him in the train coming down from Princeton. Would any of them remember him? Would the porter in Gotham whom he'd asked directions when he changed trains? Would Toni, the pretty attendant who showed him to his cabin? No, of course not. Harold was spectacularly un-memorable, a science geek from Princeton who looked at your shoes when he asked where to catch the Lakeway Express to Metropolis, who remembered that? He would make a wonderful spy.

Not that it really mattered if Harold was remembered or not. He'd never done anything like this before and there was no reason to think he'd ever be called on to do it again. He only got the job because Rupert Fantova was his thesis advisor. It really came down to being in the right place at the right time… kind of the exact opposite of Cary Grant in _North by Northwest_.

* * *

The lights flickered. Five minutes to curtain. Damn her.

A private box was not like an ordinary seat in the orchestra. Because the comings and goings from the boxes would not disturb other patrons, there was no difficulty seating latecomers after the show had begun. Still, Clark said he'd seen Selina getting out of a taxi. She should have been there by now. Bruce was anxious to hear what she learned, if it was all just "Eddie being Eddie" or if there was an actual crisis brewing that he and Clark should be worried about. The lights flickered again. The show was about to start and now they weren't going to be able to talk until intermission. Damn her.

At the same time, bringing up "Eddie" was never an easy prospect for Bruce. Balancing Batman with being Selina's boyfriend was normally as effortless as breathing. Something about the way they'd come together as Bat and Cat, he felt truly _himself_ with her, more than with any woman he'd ever known. He didn't have to juggle roles with either Selina or Catwoman, he simply… was. Except when Edward Nigma was involved. That's when this delicate balancing act began and he was never quite sure who he was, where he stood, and where it was safe to put his weight down.

The theatre lights lowered and, at last, Bruce heard the soft latch of the door behind him. He heard the hushed whisper of the usher, and then he felt more than heard Selina's near-silent approach. He glanced in her direction as she sat, curious why Clark had noticed her dress. It certainly didn't seem like anything remarkable.

"You're late," he growled softly.

"I'm worth waiting for," she purred as the curtain rose.

The play began, but Bruce couldn't concentrate on it. He glanced at the dress again and began analyzing it. Black on top and off the shoulder (which, okay, was very flattering with Selina's black hair). Some kind of black, white and grey print below – and short (which, okay, showed off her legs very nicely). It was an appropriate outfit for "Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle out on the town," but he still couldn't see anything special about it. What on earth was Clark talking about?

The audience laughed at the first joke of the show. Bruce hadn't heard the setup, but he took the cue when Selina chuckled. He faked a smile and then berated himself for it. The smile he'd produced on short notice looked too much like the vapid fop not getting the joke because he was too stupid to know the reference. His quick adjustment looked like the vapid fop not getting the joke because he was slightly inebriated. Luckily, it was a dark theatre and everyone was watching the play. It was unlikely that anyone saw his stumble, but it still wasn't the sort of mistake Batman was accustomed to making.

And speaking of mistakes he wasn't used to making… Once again, the audience erupted into peals of merriment, as if some karmic laughtrack was mocking him… Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle were out on the town. Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle were attending the theatre. Selina was dressed appropriately for the occasion, and Bruce Wayne, once the country's most notorious womanizing playboy, had most definitely missed his cue – an unforgivable lapse when Clark, the folksy farmboy, had actually _prompted him_.

"You look beautiful," he said quietly. "That's a nice dress."

Selina turned, very slowly, the darkness of the theatre evoking nocturnal rooftops and empty museums, making it impossible for him to see anything but Felinity in those gleaming eyes. She turned her attention back to the stage, or at least she seemed to, and for a minute Bruce thought that was the only response he would get. But then, after another few lines of dialogue on the stage sent another titter of laughter through the audience, she spoke without looking at him.

"You're dying to know what happened today, aren't you?"

"Yes," he replied, too quickly and too emphatically.

Then the playful grin, still without looking at him.

"You're allowed to ask, you know."

"Yes, but I didn't want to interrupt the show… You looked like you were enjoying it."

"Oh I was, but not the one down there. I've enjoyed you sitting there working yourself into a froth."

He grunted.

"You spent the day with him, didn't you. If you knew he was pulling something right this minute, you'd have told me as soon as you walked in. So there's no point playing twenty questions now when the show has two intermissions…"

"Mmm, So yummy," Selina purred, as if savoring the caviar canapé from the spa rather than the abrupt logic of Batman's mind at work. "Why everybody thinks Spitcurl is the charming one I will never understand."

She reached into her purse and pulled out the slip of paper bearing a single green question mark.

"Your clue," she said, passing it to him.

He inspected it covertly, then slipped it into his pocket.

"No surprise there." Then, after a beat, he added, "Thank you."

"Meow." Then, after a similar beat, she added, "If it matters, it was in a marshmallow."

"In a marshma…? Do I even want to know?"

"Only if you're interested in sampling the best hot chocolate in the city before we leave. Lois told him about it. Seems she made quite an impression."

"She has that effect," Bruce admitted.

He paused. Both seemed to watch the show for a few minutes, during which another sputter of mirth from the karmic laugh track seemed to mock him. Finally he spoke.

"So, did he track you around the city all day to keep up the charade, or did he just walk right up to you like he would at the Iceberg?"

Selina explained briefly about his approach at the spa, about the lunch and the sightseeing, and concluded that if it was Bruce's idea to turn Lex's old office into a public skydeck, it was a vast improvement.

"No, that was Clark's idea," Bruce admitted. "He always loved that view. Said it was the closest you could come to seeing the city the way he does."

The audience burst into enthusiastic applause as the lights came up. The first act was over, but rather than get up for intermission, Bruce reached over and touched Selina's leg, indicating she shouldn't get up yet. She had turned to look at him, the brighter light levels shattering the moonlit rooftop effect from before.

Somehow that made it worse. This would be easier to say to Catwoman.

"Did he happen to mention the tigers?" Bruce asked, appalled by the hint of trepidation in his voice (that Selina didn't seem to notice).

"You must be psychic," she grinned. "He did mention them, knows all about them. Which is pretty damn impressive really, considering the little one hasn't found a favorite tree yet."

"Some idiot at STAR left his notes on them lying out," Bruce graveled angrily. "Nig… Edward must have seen them when he was there."

"On a Post-it," Selina noted, touched but amused by the reaction on both sides. "He expressed concern about that, actually. Doesn't think you're 'looking after my secrets' very well."

Bruce's mouth dropped open, that careful balance between Batman and Selina's boyfriend toppled once again, this time by joint waves of shock and relief – which he quickly covered behind a mask of irate battitude.

"This from the criminal_ mastermind_ who hasn't changed apartments in six years. Or 'secret' lairs in four. Anything else?"

"He was thrilled beyond words that you knew the third clue would be 'in,'" she teased.

A density shift radiated pure hostile intensity.

"I _meant_ did he reveal anything else relevant _to the case_?"

"Hm, let me think…" As always, Selina seemed immune to that ferocious Bat-intensity that made hardened killers quake in terror – or rather, instead of being terrified, she seemed warmed and aroused by it. "Oh, yes! There was something else. The target, whatever it is, he said it's catworthy."

Bruce went quiet, wheels-turning over the clues he had so far, trying to put the pieces together into some shape that would make sense to a mind like the Riddler's…

Selina merely watched, until she heard him murmur "catworthy;" then she realized the misunderstanding and touched his arm.

"I think I gave you the wrong impression there. 'Catworthy' wasn't a clue; it was an offer. You know, like if I wanted to join in. The target is catworthy."

The wheels ground to a halt and Bruce's eyes went square.

"_Join in?" _he hissed. "You mean he wanted… He honestly thought you'd go for it?"

"No. He 'honestly' knew I was going to refuse, otherwise he would have told me what the priceless target was instead of just saying catworthy. But he asked anyway, and that was sweet of him."

Bruce glared, and the lights flickered again, indicating the second act was about to begin.

* * *

_North by Northwest, _now that was a spy picture. Ordinary man thrown into extraordinary circumstances just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time… Okay, strictly speaking, it was hard to buy Cary Grant as an "ordinary man." Harold Avies was an ordinary man. Cary Grant was CARY GRANT. But _North by Northwest _was the spy thriller Harold kept remembering, since he was on a train.

It wasn't that easy to sleep on a train, at least it wasn't if you were on a mission like Harold's. So he lay there thinking about spy movies. Alas, no Eva Marie Saint had crossed his path, beguiling her way into his sleeper compartment with a flurry of suggestive subtext. But no Martin Landau had showed up to kill him either, so… No Martin Landau, no Robert Shaw from SPECTRE, no Jaws from _The Spy Who Loved Me_, no creepy Germans from _The Lady Vanishes_, and no entire IMF force including the Rich Little lookalike from _Mission Impossible_…

Boy, the more Harold thought about it, trains were really a _terrible_ way to get around if you were a spy… at least in the movies.

* * *

Catwoman never claimed to understand detective logic. It was entirely possible that Batman's insistence on visiting each and every place she'd been with Eddie that afternoon was a perfectly sound crimefighting exercise. It was also possible that this was the man reacting more than bat. He'd been moody through the last two acts of the show, moody through supper at a quaint jazz club near the theatre, and moody on the cab ride back to the hotel. Of course the last wasn't helped by the fact that it _was_ a cab they were riding in. The specter of Claudia Reisweiller-Muffington seducing Eddie by removing her panties in the back of a taxi continued to haunt them after they'd paid off the driver and returned to the room. Back in the room, Bruce obviously couldn't wait to get into costume and, as soon as he did, he declared the spa would be their first stop. Selina hadn't questioned it – although she did question going out the window just to drop down a floor and come in through a different one. What difference did it make if Batman and Catwoman entered the hotel through Bruce Wayne's room or George Ruderick's? Batman growled and grumbled, and in the end—even though breaking and entering was on her side of the partnership more than his—she agreed to do it his way. So they made their way through George Ruderick's hotel suite and down to the spa. She showed him the Relaxation Room where Eddie made contact and the corridor leading to the women's locker room where he'd waited while she got changed. She pretended not to notice when Batman's eyes flickered over the spa robes hanging on the wall and then glanced at her legs.

"Yes, I was in the short one after my pedicure," she mentioned wickedly.

His reaction was… pleasingly nostalgic. Batman feigning complete disinterest in her seductive teasing while his whole body radiated his awareness of her as a woman. She purred. He grunted. And then, before the growing tension could develop into anything, he turned to go. It was all so vividly familiar.

They left the Four Seasons for the next destination: a celebrated neighborhood café called Hot Chocolate. This entailed a short train ride out to Sikela Park and minutes of heady physical contact that left him more physically agitated than before. Selina was obvi— Catwoman, that is, _ Catwoman_ was obviously aroused by the experience, racing through the chilly Metropolis night with only his grapnel – and his arms – holding her to the speeding train. And Catwoman excited and aroused in that way was never something he quite knew how to deal with. The more he shut down to her, the more she affected him. By the time she'd picked the lock on Hot Chocolate's back door, he could barely concentrate. At the very least, he should have been the one to break in. Sure, it might have taken him forty seconds longer to pick the lock, but it would have given him something to focus on – something _other_ than the sight of Catwoman picking a lock. Through a haze of cat memories, he entered the restaurant, examined the décor, the menu, and the table where Selina and Nigma were seated that afternoon. Meanwhile Catwoman looked over the menu.

"They have a Sunday Brunch," she said casually.

PsychoBat tuned her out. If-Tiny-In… Infinity… lemniscate was the infinity symbol. Chocolates because Selina liked them. And pussywillows… The tigers were looking more and more like an irrelevant coincidence… or a deliberate red herring… but probably just a coincidence… Catworthy… Catworthy. The bastard asked Catwoman – asked Selina – to "join in" his criminal enterprise… and she said it was sweet of him. She said it was nice to be asked…

PsychoBat reminded himself sharply that _that was irrelevant_ – unless he thought she might have taken him up on the offer. Was that a possibility he had to consider? Might Catwoman and Riddler be working together now?

Bruce slammed the door on that thought: No, it was not possible.

Well then, PsychoBat insisted, if Catwoman wasn't a suspect, then he should stop thinking about her and_ focus on the case_.

Then again, Batman thought suddenly, he wasn't the only one with cats padding around his thoughts on this case, now was he? If sending the "E" to Selina had nothing to do with the tigers, if sending chocolates and pussywillows had nothing to do with the tigers… then what was behind the recurring cat-angle?

That question returned at the Art Institute. Selina said they hadn't gone inside; they just sat under the huge bronze lions and talked…

At first Batman considered the lions in relation to the Dhumavati tigers and the Catitat, then he considered Selina herself, steps away from one of the greatest art collections in the country and not bothering to go inside. She just sat out front and chatted with her friend. Again PsychoBat berated him for focusing on the irrelevant… and again he countered with the notion that Selina _wasn't_ irrelevant. Nigma himself was making her central to… to whatever was going on.

The final stop of the night would be Selina and Eddie's final stop that afternoon: the LexCorp Skydeck. Batman thought it important to tell Superman because of the Luthor angle. It did _seem_ like their visit – and indeed Nigma's whole afternoon with Selina – was just about sightseeing, but you could never be certain with someone like Edward Nigma. Certainty led to futile laps around the sun while your wife was being kidnapped. So Batman had called Superman and, even though it would be "a few hours past my bedtime," he agreed to meet them at the base of the towers so they could all inspect the Skydeck together.

While they waited for Superman to arrive, Catwoman decided to "sharpen her claws" on the secret entrance she'd used to reach Luthor's office in the old days. She was curious if they'd closed the security holes after she "got in that time" (read: "_stole the plans for the top-secret X-27 airplane from Luthor's own computer, deliberately tripped an alarm to make for a more challenging escape, kidnapped Lois, tricked Superman into lifting an elevator into position where it blocked Batman's pursuit, made fools of Luthor's in-house armored security force in their own locker room before they could suit up to come after her, and then, when finally captured, startled Superman into dropping her with a sudden kiss—that he never did have the decency to mention to Bruce—and ultimately escaped with less effort than villains who could transport, shapeshift, or fly." _ _That_ she describes as "when she got in that time." Impossible woman. )

Batman let her go, "to see if they closed the security holes," although he already knew the answer: in one sense they had, but in another they hadn't. As always, Luthor's paranoia about the Alien had overridden all other considerations. He had to have his secret entrances and secret passages, always shielded in lead, unknown to half his own staff, and isolated on their own security grid. After Catwoman successfully broke in to steal the X-27 "Lex-Wing" schematics, they tried to address the security flaws she'd exploited. But with all of Luthor's Superman baggage, they could only treat the symptoms, not the cause. They replaced electric eyes with infrareds, installed an extra grating inside a ventilation duct, added a few more blackbelts to the Team Luthor security force and bought them lighter armor they could quick-attach with velcro… In sort, they did nothing of consequence to stop, or even slow down, an intruder of Catwoman's abilities. If she was breaking in today, Batman knew she would have been just as bored as she was the first time.

But still he let her go to discover all this for herself. He let her go precisely because she _was_ bored. She liked to amuse herself during any crimefighting exercise, and if he didn't let her do it with the tower security, she would probably do it with _him_ – leading to god knows what by the time Clark arrived. So he gave her a comlink, and she disappeared around the back of the building.

* * *

Conviveal… That didn't look right.

Lois added an "n." Connviveal…

It still didn't look right.

She rightclicked to check the online dictionary… And it confirmed that the spelling was wrong, but that was it. The dictionary was supposed to suggest the correct spelling based on the letters it had, but with two reporters in the household, one of whom was also a member of the Justice League, the Kent dictionary was customized with so many added words, proper names, foreign terms, alien terms, ultradimensional terms and jargon that Lois never trusted it. It might be giving her the proper spelling of convivial or it might be giving her the correct spelling for the marriage contract by which the queen of Junius 4's third moon thought she was automatically betrothed to Clark's first male offspring.

_Look now. Look at that._

Lois looked up at the television.

_It is a chair. What of it?_

She was watching ROME, the complete first season on DVD.

_A chair? That's no chair, it's a throne!_

Lois wondered if spelling was easier in ancient Rome. They had fewer letters. You could put a V in place of a U and nobody cared.

_I believe thrones are generally more decorative. That is decidedly plain, and chair-like._

As the men on screen debated the thronelike qualities of Caesar's chair, Lois reflected that TV shows coming out a season at a time on DVD was the best thing that ever happened to the medium. Her nights alone were random and impossible to predict in advance, so she had never been able to follow a series with an ongoing plot. That left sitcoms and game shows, which she despised. But now, now there was a whole world of ongoing drama opened up to her that she could preorder from NetFlix, stack on top of the TV, and whenever Clark was gone for the night, she enjoyed a mini marathon.

Tonight, she'd finished up _LOST_ (with that boy who'd played the hobbit who she found so appealing, like Mxyzptlk without the malice), tried one_ Desperate Housewives_ but decided not to continue (something about that Susan Mayer being such a ditzy klutz was strangely off-putting), and postponed _The Sopranos_ (having more than enough experience with real life mobsters) in favor of this Rome epic.

While she watched, she was working on her Nigma notes. Even though she'd agreed not to run with the kidnapping story when it happened, there would be a Riddler story sooner or later. It was only a matter of time, and thanks to the kidnapping, she had hours of exclusive material on the riddling chatterbox. When the story finally did break, she would be ready: How ironic that the most insightful coverage of the notorious Gotham rogue would not come from any paper in the villain's hometown but from the Daily Planet's own, (soon to be two-time) Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, Lois Lane…

The only problem was he was so damn connviveal… coniveal, convi—friendly, for a kidnapper, he was exceptionally hospitable and friendly.

* * *

Roger Thornhill, that was the name of Cary Grant's character in _North by Northwest_.

Harold decided that if he needed to make up a name on the spur of the moment, he should have one prepared. Otherwise in the panic of the moment, he'd probably say he was Harohnoalbert Eiseeafirehydrant.

So, not that there was any reason to think he'd have to come up with a name on short notice, but if he did, he was Roger Thornhill. Just like Cary Grant in _North by Northwest_. Roger Thornhill… Roger O Thornhill, his initials were ROT… and the O didn't stand for anything, he said…

Harold spent the next ten minutes introducing himself to his reflection. Thornhill, Roger Thornhill…

* * *

Superman hadn't realized the impossible awkwardness of the situation until he approached the Lexcorp Towers and saw Batman waiting alone. He was supposed to fly Batman _and Catwoman_ up to the Skydeck that had once been Luthor's private office, but Catwoman was nowhere to be seen—and that's when the realization hit. It would be the first time the three of them were together in that space since Catwoman stole the plans for the X-27. It would be obviously be uncomfortable, for everyone but especially for Selina. So, seeing Batman alone, Clark naturally assumed that she decided to skip this part of the night's investigation. He landed, resolving not to aggravate the situation by asking embarrassing questions. Except—

"She'll meet us up top," Batman announced without preliminaries.

"Wha-" Clark replied to avoid being truly speechless.

"She got bored – she gets bored easily when crimefighting is involved – and she went to investigate her 'alternate' route up to Luthor's office. She's well past the halfway mark, far enough that it's better to keep going than turn around and come back. She says she'll meet us."

Clark said nothing. He flew Batman up to the Skydeck without a word. He looked around, always an unusual exercise in the LexCorp Towers since every floor, door and wall was lead-lined. Since there was no way he could visually gauge Catwoman's progress, he listened for some clue as to her location— and shuddered as he realized it was exactly what he'd done the night of the break in. He glanced at Batman, who seemed unconcerned with the situation.

"They could have come up in either elevator," he noted aloud, "Tickets torn at that station if they came up this way, or over there if they came up on the penthouse side… Selina didn't mention if they used any of the viewfinders. We should check them all anyway. You take the ones on that side."

"Can I ask what you expect to find?" Superman asked.

"Possibly nothing. Possibly some markings on the lens, like the 'pan then zoom' clue he left at the sundial… Possibly something he could have seen here that would set him off, or that he might reference later… Possibly…" He trailed off as he approached a particular wall, the one he'd inspected the night of the break in after Luthor swore there was "no other way out" so Catwoman must have left through the open window. Batman had searched, found a hidden release that opened the hidden door through which Catwoman had really made her escape. Now that door was gone, and racks of Skydeck postcards, ball caps, and cup holders confronted them from the space it once concealed.

"A gift shop," Catwoman purred, emerging from behind two obscenely large banners for the Metropolis Meteors. "Boy if Lexxy could see this." She held up a plush bear wearing a Superman t-shirt and a red cape. "Now that's Karma."

Batman's lip twitched. Superman struggled to find words.

"Hey, Spitcurl," she greeted him with a smile.

It didn't make finding words any easier, and again he stood mute.

Batman asked which elevator they'd used that afternoon, and she pointed to the one on the penthouse side. Together they retraced the steps she'd taken with Riddler, and Superman revised his assumptions. There was no awkward embarrassment. It was as though Selina didn't even remember the X-27.

"Lex-Wing, that's what he called it. The X-27 Lex-Wing."

Okay, scratch that. She did remember; she was talking about it – with Batman – while they strolled back to the office side of the Skydeck where the incident actually occurred.

"I mean who would actually call an airplane a 'Lex-Wing'?" she laughed. "Didn't George Lucas go after him for infringement or something?"

Clark expected Batman to answer with the icy finality he used to shut down Wally or Eel when they were flippant in the field, but instead it was Bruce's voice that answered with relaxed indifference.

"Yes, settled out of court. It's how Lucas got the money to do the last three movies."

The feline laugh became more strident.

"That explains a lot actually."

The pair of them strolled up to him, almost casually, like lovers walking along the river at sunset—then the Bat-density shifted as Batman said, "We're through here."

"We are?" Clark asked, stupefied.

"It's an observation deck; there really isn't much to see," Batman said curtly.

"Oxymoron alert," Catwoman teased.

"I had to inspect the space to eliminate the possibility that a clue was left here more than actually searching for one."

"Oh Handsome please, a little pity for the kitty," Catwoman said, rubbing her head. "It's been a long day and remember I had a headful of Eddie to start with."

"My point is," he said, opting for short, clear sentences, "I had to come here myself and see the place in person. Now we've been here. We've looked around. There doesn't appear to be anything of concern. So we eliminate that for now. There's no clue here. There's nothing important to note. If something _is_ referenced later, we'll be able to recognize it. The job is done for now."

"Good," she smiled. "Home, bed?"

He grunted, and Catwoman declared that her trip up the secret entrance was enough "fun" for one night, and offered Superman the Super-Teddy in exchange for a speed-fly back to the hotel.

* * *

A cartoon… about a mean-spirited talking milkshake, a box of french fries with a goatee… and a meatball… sharing an apartment in the suburbs of Bludhaven.

Eddie was starting to feel that sending clues to his upcoming crimes in the form of a riddle _really wasn't that peculiar_. Of course, he never thought his particular brand of riddling criminality was strange, but now that he'd seen this "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" (which as far as he could tell had nothing to do with water, nor were they teens, nor were they a force of any kind), he had to wonder how anyone could think leaving a simple riddle at the Batsignal before a burglary in any way constituted abnormal behavior. In a world where anthropomorphic fast food hanging in a Bludhaven crib passed for entertainment, who was to say the residents of Arkham were any crazier than the folks programming this Cartoon Network?

Not that it mattered. Eddie didn't have to watch the show (thank god). He just needed the likeness of a few characters for an appropriate diversion. Now that Batman was in town, it was entirely possible that Superman might figure out where he was preparing to strike and… 15 minutes. Selina said he'd solved it in 15 minutes. From the first two pieces of the clue, he already knew the answer was 'infinity' so the final piece must be "in"… Damn, the man was good.

Unconsciously, Eddie rubbed the break point on his left leg.

He _was_ good. And he had Selina with him. It really didn't seem fair. Brains, money, muscles, hair, _and_ a woman who could keep up.

Eddie strung a wire across the back of a circuit board, repositioned a bulb… and wondered if he shouldn't have an anagram ready, just in case. If Superman showed up, he wouldn't use it. The diversion was meant for him; it would defeat the purpose to come right out and tell the big blue oaf that it was nothing but a way to keep overpowered, underwitted capes occupied so he could carry out his plan without interference. But if _Batman_ showed up instead – Batman who could neither fly nor bend steel but who _could_ solve the Infinity riddles in less than 15 minutes – then it was only fair to tell him the truth. NO MOB, BAT… That was rather good. NO MOB, BAT. For that was the point. Not a bomb.

Superman could pick up a bomb, run it out to sea or hurl it into the sun before Riddler had taken two steps towards his escape route. But a bomb _scare_ was something else entirely. He wouldn't want to start a panic:  
**4 trampled in stampede when Supermanheads off bomb squad.**

Eddie chuckled at the imaginary headline, adding the byline:  
by Lois Lane, _smarter than the rest of you Metropolis imbeciles put together._  
The Man of Steel hurled a Lite-Brite into the sun today, evidently feeling the image of an intergalactic milkshake giving viewers the finger was too great a threat for local authorities to handle. Resulting panic among bystanders led to a stampede killing 4 and injuring 7. Man of Steel expresses regret…

* * *

Despite the difficulty sleeping with scenes from sixty-odd intrigue-on-a-train movies flashing through his head, Harold had left a six o'clock call for breakfast, and at six o'clock precisely, Toni the pretty attendant came knocking at his door – alas, still not like Eva Marie Saint intent on charming his secrets out from under him, nor like the seductive Tatiana Romanova bartering her favors and a Lektor decoder for safe passage out of the Iron Curtain, but merely to announce the time and inform him the dining car was open for breakfast.

So, breakfast… after a shower. Even spies and couriers ate breakfast and took showers.

It turned out that six years of advanced study in the finest science departments in the Ivy League were no match for the shower controls in a Lakeway Express sleeper compartment, but Harold eventually managed a hot, steamy shower which left him shivering as he made his way to the dining car. He confined his interaction with staff and fellow passengers to that of any Princeton physics "extrovert" – he ordered coffee and a Southwestern omelet and looked out the window as he ate. He returned to his cabin and checked his watch. In a few hours, they'd be arriving in Metropolis.

* * *

Even for Batman, it was a full night: the theatre, jazz club, spa, restaurant, art institute and the Skydeck – coming after a full day of the Daily Planet, STAR Labs, the Fortress of Solitude, and STAR Labs again, that nagging background tension building all the while because Selina was out there with Nigma. It was an exhausting day and Bruce crashed hard when they returned to the hotel. He slept deep and dreamt of question marks stalking him through the Dhumavati death maze and Dr. Hamilton releasing tigers from the Phantom Zone. One of the tigers caught him on the LexCorp Skydeck and the rake of its claws seemed to pass right through his armor. It felt just like Catwoman's claws – but not tearing into his flesh, more of a persistent nudging.

"Bruce, Bruce wake up. You have a phone call."

The armor dissolved into a soft goosedown duvet, and the tiger's claws into Selina's ungloved hand.

"What time?" he murmured sleepily.

"9:30."

His eyes opened, he registered the white of the unfamiliar ceiling, the warmth of Selina's nudge, and the memories of Metropolis and the Nigma case in one wave of realization. Then he looked up at her with far more malice than he had when Catwoman really had scratched up his chest like the dream-tiger she just supplanted. The last thing he remembered before sleep was her ordering breakfast on the little card the hotel provided. She'd asked what he wanted, he said he didn't care, she said she'd get him a waffle… and then she got up to leave the card on the doorknob, saying she'd checked off 12 noon for room service to deliver it, the latest time they had a checkbox for unless… and that was it. He was asleep by the time she got back.

"You said they weren't delivering breakfast until noon," he growled, sitting up. "Why is it so early?"

"It's not breakfast, you have a phone call," she repeated. "Her name is Winn, from the Daily Planet. Lit button to pick up."

He blinked again, swallowed, and was full awake. Paula Winn would never call him over a trifle; it would take something big for her to overcome her terror and actually initiate contact. He took the call while Selina stumbled sleepily off to the shower…

… when she returned, Bruce was dressing – or rather Batman was – the Justice League comlink lay open on the bed and he was cursing into it while he struggled with the cape.

"Of course he did it on purpose, Clark. Now make whatever excuses you have to and—Damnit (that to the cape) —that whole thing yesterday was a ruse (that to her, she guessed). He knew I'd have to check out all the places you went together; he knew I'd be up all night doing it, and that gave him this morning to strike."

_..: We don't know that, Bruce:.._ the comlink sounded in Clark's voice.

"Of course we do. Einstein's notebooks?! It fits the infinity clue, and to an intelligence-obsessed mind like Nigma's, Albert Einstein's personal notebooks are as 'catworthy' as a target can get."

_..: Yes, I agree. I'm not disputing that's what he's after. I'm just saying that all the stops with Selina yesterday wasn't necessarily a deliberate—:.._

"I warned him if he ever used her again I'd—"

"Hi," Selina interrupted, yanking the cape into position and claiming his attention at the same time. "Einstein notebooks?" she asked, now fussing with the cape and emblem the way another woman might tie her husband's tie.

_..: Good morning, Selina:._. the comlink called cheerily.

"Morning Spitcurl," she replied without turning her eyes from Bruce. "Einstein notebooks?" she asked again.

"Paula Winn is on the board of the Science and Industry Museum," he explained briefly. "I asked a lot of questions about it yesterday. To be honest I was just trying to get some lifesigns; she tends to panic whenever she meets me. Now it turns out I asked so many questions that it penetrated the fog, she gets that I'm interested in the museum and invited me to sit in on this acquisition they're making today-_this morning_."

"Einstein notebooks."

"Right, along with a few personal artifacts. The transfer happens at eleven. The courier's train is getting in any time now. Clark's flying out now to escort it in. That shifty bastard, he knew we'd be up all night revisiting all those—"

"Yeah, you did that part already, and it sounds like there isn't time to argue about it. So-" she paused just long enough to kiss his cheek "-You and Spitcurl give him hell-" kiss "-Save the day-" kiss "-Don't break his legs again unless you have to-" kiss "-Then come back, wake me up, and we'll split a waffle."

_..: Bruce, seriously, you need to marry that girl.:.._

* * *

In 1912 a consortium of railroads formed to commission a new railway station in downtown Metropolis. They wanted a station "befitting the city's status as America's railway hub." They wanted a station "to make an architectural impact"… What they really wanted was a station to outshine Gotham's Grand Central Terminus. The Beaux Arts colossus was completed twelve years later. Visitors were awed by a cavernous "Great Hall" that measured 20,000 square feet. Flanked by soaring Corinthian columns, pink marble floors, terracotta walls, and crowned with a five-story, barrel-vaulted skylight, everything about the station was engineered to impress. Built – and in fact overbuilt – for the grandiose taste of Midwest robber barons, the station was one of the few significant buildings in the city to escape branding by LexCorp in the guise of a restoration. Even Luthor could find nothing to expand, gild, or enhance the sprawling structure. Although the station could handle as many as 400,000 passengers per day, only about 100,000 passed through in its heyday in the 1940s. Today that number had dwindled to a few thousand on a good day. The station had two sets of tracks, ten leading northbound and ten southbound. Capable of handling more than 700 trains in a single day, there was only one passenger train arriving this morning.

Harold Avies stepped out onto a crowded platform bustling with passengers boarding the outbound Texas Eagle on the adjacent track, and deafening with the engine noise of several nearby commuter trains. A Redcap arrived with a luggage cart, as he would to deliver any first-class passenger to the Metropolitan Lounge, but Harold waved him away. He had no luggage beyond the student backpack slung over his shoulder, and the industrial-looking briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. It was an incongruous image: the awkward, scruffy grad student with his toothbrush and a change of underwear in a worn canvas backpack, carrying this monstrous titanium attaché that looked like something they took out of the Swiss bank vault in the Bourne Identity.

Harold looked around, hoping for a sign to ground transportation so he could find a taxi, when he saw a very different type of sign: AVIES. It was a chauffer, an actual uniformed chauffer holding a handwritten sign with his name, just like in the movies. Harold shifted his weight and looked around, unsure how to proceed.

"Eh, you from the science museum?" he squeaked, looking (in true science geek fashion) at the man's shoes.

"Yessir," the chauffer replied.

"Cool," Harold nodded. "I mean, uh, YES, I mean, I'm Harold Avies."

The chauffer began leading him through the terminal, and Harold started to ask the question all first-time visitors ask of taxidrivers and hotel clerks in Metropolis…"Have you ever seen Superman?"…when all hell broke loose.

First there was a weird bluish shadow washing across the huge vaulted skylight, and a few lucky folks who looked up in time squealed and pointed as they caught a glimpse of costume or cape. Then everyone could see Superman, standing there – or, well, more like floating there, right over their heads, right inside the train station hovering under the skylight.

"Wooww," Harold managed, a breathy exhale of pure awe.

"Stay right where you are, Rid—" the Man of Steel began—when a squealing high-pitched alarm sounded and a squad of men like a SWAT team ran in from three different entrances and ordered everyone to move quickly but calmly towards the exits.

Superman didn't question them but lowered to the ground at once – Harold guessed he was going to talk to the SWAT guys and find out what was going on. Harold could only guess because the chauffer was half-pushing him/half pulling him towards the door, almost like a bodyguard, so Harold really didn't get a chance to see what else happened inside the station. He thought he heard the words "bomb threat" "check up there" and "Mooninite," but there was no time to even think about that before they were outside, racing towards a green and black van as if they were running from gunfire or the station was about to explode into a big end-of-the-spy-movie fireball. The back of the van opened, and it seemed like the chauffer was going to shove him inside—as if Harold himself had the secret data locked in his head and had to be protected from snipers lying in wait—when all of a sudden, just as he was almost inside—the whole van lifted right off the ground and went soaring into the air! —And a big black blur that turned out to be BATMAN came swinging out of nowhere! Right through the empty space where the van had just been! —And went soaring boots first into the chauffeur's gut!

The rest was a blur of green gas bulbs, whizzing Batarangs, flying capes and pounding fists—entirely too much excitement for Harold who, despite having Jason Bourne's safe deposit box shackled to his wrist, was just a grad student from Princeton, New Jersey! He did what anybody with an IQ of 190 would do, he ran!

He ran like mad, into the traffic lane, nearly getting clipped by a bus as he went, visions of Roger Thornhill running from the crop duster in North by Northwest merging into James Bond racing away from a helicopter in Russia with Love—the menace from the skies no longer confined to his imagination as news helicopter whirred overhead, proclaiming itself SuperStation WLEX, then in smaller print, "An Eye on Metropolis"—Too late, Harold realized that no spy worth his double-0 would stop to read the advertising tagline on the helicopter—in the time it took, the traffic light changed and cars were heading his way in both lanes! Again he did what anybody with an IQ of 190 would do, discovering this time that he'd somehow, in his panic, run full circle and was back at the green and black van, and back in the heart of the battle in front of the train station.

Again he found himself surrounded by a blur of green gas bulbs, whizzing Batarangs and flying capes— and again, he did what anyone with an IQ of 190 would do (after running had failed twice)— He hid!

At least he kept _trying_ to hide, but every time he crawled under something, Superman picked it up!

Finally, in sheer desperation, he sprinted back INTO the train station, colliding with members of the SWAT team on their way out carrying a— a— Harold blinked, finding himself staring into the cold LED eyes of Ignignokt the Mooninite from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, as a kind of chemical reaction occurred in his brain, the sheer absurdity of the image reacting with the hours of anxious boredom and fantastic daydreams on the train, catalyzed by the panic of the last minutes… Harold suddenly found himself utterly confident, composed and serene.

"Excuse me," he told the SWAT captain politely, looking the man in the eye. "I didn't see you there."

Before the officers could explain that the train station was still closed to the public, Superman lowered into position beside them and tapped Harold on the shoulder.

"Are you the young man from Princeton bringing the Einstein Notebooks to the Science Museum?" he asked in the tone one might use to avoid spooking an injured animal.

Harold turned, looked Superman straight in the eye, and offered his hand—cuffed briefcase and all.

"Avies," he said, with all the suavity of a double-0 operative. "_Harold_ Avies."

* * *

…to be continued…


	7. Einstein

**Riddle Me-Tropolis**_  
Chapter 7: Einstein_

* * *

∞ ∞ ∞  
Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.  
—Albert Einstein  
∞ ∞ ∞

There's no downplaying a newsworthy event if the head of a newspaper is involved. Superman and Batman had anticipated the Riddler's crime, stopped him from grabbing Harold Avies and stopped him from getting the Einstein notebooks, but they had not prevented his escape. That meant he would try again and it would be prudent to control the information released to the public, keep it vague and keep it to a minimum—not the easiest proposition in the Publisher's office of the Daily Planet.

Once they'd secured Harold at the train station, the first priority was moving the meeting where the formal transfer of ownership was to occur. The museum officials, lawyers, bankers, curators, insurance and security advisors, authenticators, and Princeton representatives were already gathered at the Science and Industry Museum waiting for Harold's arrival. Superman went to collect them while Batman personally escorted Harold Avies to an alternate location, one determined on the spur of the moment, where the Riddler could not possibly have any plans in place to interfere: Paula Winn's office on the top floor of the Daily Planet.

Unfortunately, Winn's paralytic timidity with Bruce Wayne seemed to be a localized phenomenon. With Batman she was more than formidable, a tigress defending her twin cubs: the Science Museum's acquisition of the notebooks and the Daily Planet's exclusive of a Riddler incident. After a 10-second introduction to Avies and a 20-second inspection of the briefcase cuffed to his wrist, she turned all her attention to Batman: How could this Riddler have learned about the sale? How did he learn the courier's movements? How did he escape? How _could_ he escape from both Batman and Superman? How secure was this new location going to be anyway? Granted it wasn't prearranged, so he couldn't have intercepted any letters or memos about it, but if he could escape from Batman _and Superman_ in the first place (and she never did get a clear answer on how that happened), mightn't he have anticipated this change in plan and be ready to strike again?

∞ ∞ ∞  
A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.  
—Albert Einstein  
∞ ∞ ∞

The counterintuitive. It's something all upper level scientists must get used to. Sometimes the solution is the exact opposite of what common sense says it should be.

The counterintuitive reality Batman had to accept was that a professional reporter would be less of a nuisance than Paula Winn. So he maneuvered Winn into calling downstairs and having Clark Kent or Lois Lane sent up from the newsroom to cover the still-unfolding story. That way the Planet wouldn't be operating off the same dry press releases the museum would send everyone. Paula agreed—or to be precise, Batman presented it in such a way that she thought it was her idea. She called down to Perry White, Perry said Kent was out meeting a source but he'd send Lois up ASAP, and Lois, reading Batman's hints, focused on the museum's acquisition of the notebooks rather than Nigma's attempt to steal them. She kept Paula occupied with a flood of background queries about the museum: how the sale came about, who approached whom, what other buyers they might have beaten out to obtain the notebooks for Metropolis, and what their plans were to display the new treasure… Freed of a burden (and making a mental note that Lois's 5-minute exclusive with Bruce Wayne should now be stretched to 10), Batman turned his attention to Harold.

"Y'know, I was just in Gotham," the young man volunteered, still radiating the suave confidence of _Harold Avies, interstate man of mystery_. "I was just changing trains, but it seemed like a really great city. At least what I saw of it. Train station is a lot cooler than the one here."

Never one to ignore praise for his city, Batman grunted before turning his attention to the briefcase shackled to Harold's wrist.

"May I?" he asked abruptly, examining a double lock on the front that resembled those on a safe deposit box, requiring two keys to be turned simultaneously.

Harold consented, lifting his wrist and explaining (for the sixth time) that he was very sorry he couldn't help but he himself was unable open the case. A Ms. Garr from the museum had been sent one key in advance and Rupert Fantova, the official masterminding the sale on Princeton's end, was bringing the other.

A rambling and pointless explanation followed: how it was really Fantova's late wife who'd become such a friend of Einstein's after he settled at Princeton—Well, really she met him in the 20s in Europe, but it was more towards the end of his life that they really became close, having dinner together and going sailing—Did Batman know Einstein was a great sailor? He said it was "the sport which demanded the least energy." He didn't like any recreation that was mentally taxing; guess he had enough of that in his work. But anyway, this Fantova woman was also a librarian at the college, so when the time came for someone to become custodian of his notebooks…

A dark, brooding tension settled while the young man prattled on. The story might be interesting under other circumstances, but for now, a freeform recitation of Einstein trivia was the last thing Batman wanted to deal with. What made it worse was Lois and Paula's growing interest in the tale. They had suspended their interview and were now listening to Harold's endless stream of obscure Einstein factoids (Lois was particularly excited to learn the greatest mind of the 20th Century was a terrible speller), making it impossible for Batman to continue his discreet examination of the case. He withdrew to the outer office, called Clark, and suggested he hurry the party he was escorting from the museum because two of them were carrying keys that might make them a secondary target.

That accomplished, he tapped a control on the communicator that would let it function like an ordinary telephone. He keyed in Selina's cell number and stared at it, wondering.

∞ ∞ ∞  
If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.  
—Albert Einstein  
∞ ∞ ∞

_..:Meow:.._ Selina answered promptly.

"Secure the line," Batman ordered.

There was a soft click, and again she meowed.

Batman paused, unsure how to proceed.

"I'm… bringing something back when we're done here, something for you to look at."

_..:Okay:.._ came the halting reply. _ ..:Line is secure, you know. You can speak freely—Oh, unless you can't because of something on you're your end?:.._

"No, no it's not that," he graveled. "I … I just want to see if you can open something."

_..:Of course I can.:.._

"You don't know what it is yet."

_..:Let's start again. 'Meow' I'm me. I can open it.:.._

He scowled. The truth was he knew that before he called. Of course Catwoman could open the case, that went without saying.

_..:What's wrong, Stud?:.._

But it still needled him to hear her say it.

"Nothing… Enjoy your waffle."

Yet hearing her say it was the reason he called, wasn't it?

He hung up.

Tense minutes passed until Superman arrived with Fantova and the others—and then everything became much tenser. Rather than walking them calmly through the door in a body, Superman was speed-running his charges in two at a time—and from some distance away judging by the lapse of several seconds between arrivals. The experience left them shaken and retching when he finally let go, but Batman paid little attention to that. He left Paula and Harold to look after the shaken officials, their condition hardly a concern compared to whatever moved Superman to take such an action.

"Stay in there and bolt the door," Superman ordered when the last museum rep was safely in the office. Then he turned to Batman, seeming almost winded.

Batman knew the look. It _seemed_ like exertion but it wasn't; it was shock. Something had set Superman back on his heels.

"Come on, he's here in the building!" Superman called, heading out the door again. "I don't know how he could have known, but we ran right into him downstairs. Elevator doors opened and there he was, waiting for us. Batman, how could he have known?"

In the time it took the heroes to run to the lobby, Batman considered and rejected a dozen answers to that question. Could Nigma have placed a transmitter on Harold or even on Batman during the fight at the train station? Could he have guessed the fallback location? Could the whole episode at the station have been a ruse to force them to a fallback position he had already planned for? Could Harold himself be a mole or a decoy? Was this the elusive cat-connection finally revealed? Was Winn an obscure breed of lion or tiger that he'd never heard of? That even Selina never heard of? No that was impossible, so if Winn was a tiger, she knew—Is that why she was here? Did he miss some clue to ask her about little known wildcats or-No. Paula Winn's office was the improvised fallback; there was no way it or she could be referenced in the earliest clues…

They reached the lobby and scanned the crowd for any sign of Riddler. Finding nothing, Superman took the time to map out the positioning of the incident: The party from the museum came in the main entrance and gathered here in the elevator bay. They knew they would need two cars, maybe even three. They pushed the call button, and waited five or six here, a few more there, and the rest right over here. The number 3 elevator opened first, and there he stood, Nigma! Still in that chauffer getup, lying in wait.

"Or leaving the building," Batman grimaced.

"What do you mean?" Superman asked.

"It's the usual reason someone rides an elevator down to the lobby."

Batman stared out the door, remembering an account of the Catwoman bankrobber disappearing into the busy lunchtime crowd on the streets of downtown Taranaki. Metropolis was about 500 times larger than Taranaki, and Planet Square was the pedestrian hub.

"Given the time it took to speed-run all your charges up to Winn's office, and the time it took us to get down here, he could be anywhere by now if he headed straight out the door."

"But why would he when he'd caught us with our—"

"No," Batman shook his head. "He didn't catch you. He wasn't lying in wait. He was probably just as shocked as you were. Nigma couldn't have known the meeting was moved here. It was a coincidence."

"That's _impossible_."

"Something I say nightly dealing with villains of Riddler's caliber. Scan the building. We'll learn soon enough what he was doing here."

Batman watched Superman's face as he applied his X-ray vision to different foci, working floor by floor through the dense office building. He knew at once when his friend had found it—and reflected sourly that Nigma would have considered it a victory if he could have seen the dumbfounded shock settling onto Superman's features as the image registered.

"Well?" Batman asked curtly.

"19th floor," came the dull response.

∞ ∞ ∞  
You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.  
—Albert Einstein  
∞ ∞ ∞

While Superman returned to Paula Winn's office to safeguard the signing of papers, producing of keys, and opening of cases that would complete the Einstein sale, Batman went to the 19th floor to inspect the suite of offices Riddler had used as a hideout.

The first few _objets d'riddle_ were fairly subtle: a giant Chinese checkerboard hung on the wall, a four foot tangram displayed in the reception area. To the casual visitor, one who just stepped through the wrong door, glanced around and walked back out, it could pass for art —albeit the work of an artist obsessed with games. As Batman moved further in, however, the more Nigmaesque the lair became. The largest office was painted his signature green. Giant crosswords hung on the walls. And the computer—rigged to hack into all the Daily Planet systems—was awash in decorative question marks. Question marks were painted onto the casing, onto the sides of the monitor and the printer. The desktop wallpaper displayed an especially ornate gold one on a green background, and—most Nigma of all—the question mark key on his otherwise black keyboard was replaced with a vivid Riddler green.

Batman inspected the room first, taking pictures of the crosswords on the walls for later study, uncovering a small cache question mark weapons and some interesting notes on the desk—**_not_** in Nigma's handwriting—evidently collected from the Daily Planet's trash… Finally, he turned his attention back to the computer. By the time Superman arrived, he'd worked out the infiltration of the Planet's commercial and personal ad databases. More importantly, he'd worked out how Nigma hacked Paula's email and learned about the sale of the notebooks. Satisfied, he copied the entire hard drive to a memory stick and then turned his attention to Superman.

"These question marks are gas grenades," he pointed out. "Those are explosives. These tiny ones are razor sharp. He can seed them through an enclosed space like an air duct to keep from being pursued—of course the downside is he cuts off his own path that way as well."

Superman gave a curt nod and asked if there was anything else. Batman explained how the hacking was done, and again there was a nod—although not quite as quick and confident.

"What's his email alert?" he asked, suddenly remembering the STAR incident. "Not… the 'default beep'?"

"You familiar with Mozart's Dice Game?"

"Yes," Superman lied.

Batman grunted.

"Look, they're going to be done inspecting the notebooks upstairs," Superman said quietly, although there was no one around to overhear. "I want to escort them back to the museum and see that the notebooks are properly secured. But Bruce, he's going to try again. You said it yourself. A prize like that, he wouldn't stop at one thwarted attempt, would he?"

"No, he'll try again," Batman agreed in tones so soft only Superman could hear.

"That's why I was thinking, since she's in town, maybe Catwoman should have a look at the place? Check out where they're going to store the notebooks until they're ready to go on display to the public, and then the security arrangements for the final exhibit where—"

"No."

"Why not?"

The word "Catworthy" flashed through Bruce's mind. He glanced back at the computer where a bright green question mark key seemed to taunt him.

"I don't know. There's entirely too much I still don't know. She's 'in town' because he brought her here, Clark. He's making her central to all of this, and until I know why, I won't play into his hands by—"

"You don't think that…?" Superman interrupted.

"No!" Batman answered definitely.

"I don't either," Superman said with quiet intensity. "Since we're agreed they're not working together, and she is the best when it comes to getting past locks that nobody is supposed to get past, I say we ask her to have a look."

Batman looked again at the bright green question mark. That word "ask" did strike a chord. _"He knew I was going to refuse, but he asked anyway and that was sweet of him."_ She said it was nice to be asked…

"There's a lot I still have to work out when I see her," Batman growled definitely. "Once I know… then we can ask her."

∞ ∞ ∞  
Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.  
—Albert Einstein  
∞ ∞ ∞

Bruce Wayne had always stayed at the Four Seasons when he was in Metropolis, but Batman would never return through the suite's window alone and in daylight. He would take a circuitous route through the service entrance, appropriate a waiter's uniform, and return to the suite with a cart of dirty dishes collected from outside someone else's room. But today Superman was with him, and Metropolis was used to Superman. If anyone did notice both heroes approaching a given floor of the building, there was nothing suspicious about it. A thrill to see Superman perhaps, but that negated any surprise at seeing that Gotham vigilante swinging through Metropolis skies.

They climbed through the window and saw Selina was stretched out on the sofa, watching CNN's retro-coverage of the bomb scare —which popular punditry had apparently declared a laughable overreaction.

"Hey fellas," she greeted them, indulging in a magnificent feline stretch.

Batman grunted in reply and turned toward the bedroom to change, but he was stopped in his tracks at the sound of Superman's response.

"Se-_lina_, good to see you again. Would have been nice to have you with us this morning. Catwoman is always such a spunky go-getter in the field. But I can't begrudge you an extra hour's beauty sleep when you turn out looking like that."

Cat and Woman were at odds. Cats respond to all praise of their appearance and person with nothing but pleased satisfaction that you finally noticed. Selina, on the other hand, had to wonder why Bruce's friend and Batman's ally was behaving like he just got a snortful of Ivy pheromones.

"Nice to see you too, Spitcurl," she managed, safely acknowledging the compliments as felinity demanded, but prudently making a mental note to check her pink sapphire at the first opportunity for any sign of alternate-reality leakage.

Batman continued into the bedroom, and Selina pointed Superman to the remains of a fruit plate left over from breakfast.

"Clue-free this time, I promise," she teased. "Help yourself if you're hungry."

He took an apple and sat next to her, watching as the television showed a close-up of Riddler's "bomb."

"Maybe this is his famed paranoia rubbing off on me," she confided, nodding towards the bedroom, "but I don't care how cute or silly something _looks. _If it shows up in a train station or an overpass, or near a medical center or a reservoir, and it's not supposed to be there, then I'd much rather you get laughed at for hurling it into the sun than be sitting here listening to death tolls right now."

"That's not paranoia," Superman said kindly. "It's a different perspective. You've been in a room with a ticking bomb, Selina. You've looked down the barrel of a gun. For most people, the idea that there are others in the world who _truly_ _want them dead_ is unreal."

"And," Bruce added, entering from the bedroom, "the reality that someone would be prepared to act to bring that about is a distant, not-quite-believable notion. So they focus on the silly-looking creature on the front of the device and find the whole episode absurd."

Selina smiled up at him and purred at Bruce Wayne's lounging-around-the-suite ensemble.

"Well the good news is nobody seems to know Eddie was behind it," she said. "Present company excepted, obviously. And for what it's worth, the silly creature is called a 'Mooninite' and the only anagrams I can get out of that are 'Noontime' and 'Toe Minions.'"

He grunted, said he too thought the 'bombs' had little significance other than keeping the super-powered adversary occupied, and then he lapsed into silence.

Selina looked back and forth between the men; she seemed to be waiting for something.

"I like that shirt on you," she told Bruce finally, like it was a bribe. "The blue brings out your eyes."

He stiffened, as he had on a hundred rooftops when she'd purred sinful promises in his ear. She wanted something and would resort to this to get it, even in front of Clark…

"Hey, I have blue eyes too," Superman noted, pulling on the sleeve of his costume.

Selina turned to face him… and agreed (in the same spirit and tone she used to humor rogues at the Iceberg) that he had very nice eyes – which, yes, the blue of his costume brought out beautifully – and you know what, it was the red of the cape that really set off the blue. It was all very, very, _very_ meow.

Superman nodded, satisfied (although his satisfaction would have been short-lived if he knew she'd once used the same triple build to distract Killer Croc when he was set on twisting Nightwing's head off).

For her part, Selina looked again from one hero to the other.

"Oh come on, guys!" she demanded finally, the dangerous seductress vanished into a playful kitten anticipating yarn. "What do I have to do to get my paws on this thing you want me to open?"

"Ah, yes," Bruce said, remembering the phone call when he'd told her about it. He nodded to Superman, who zipped out the window. A moment later, Clark Kent walked in the door carrying Harold Avies now-empty briefcase.

"Open it," Bruce said brusquely, then catching the angry flash in her eyes, he softened it with "I mean, see how quickly you can get it open."

Her eyes gleamed with excitement as she took the case and turned it over, inspecting the double locks and then the seams and hinges.

"Hm, locks are right there in front, just like it seems. They're so butch and obvious, I thought maybe those locks were a decoy and the real one was hidden somewhere in the back."

She got up and headed for the bedroom.

"Wait, where are you going?" Bruce asked, getting up to follow. "It's not open, you didn't even try."

"Oh hang on," she called back, "Don't get your batarangs in a bunch."

She returned a minute later – _with a batarang_ along with set of strange keys with the pins filed down to the base and only a tiny row of raised triangles remaining.

"It's a double lock, like a safe deposit box, right," she said, sliding one key into each lock, then pulling them out a notch. "Two keys turned at the same time. You can't pick that the regular way." She tapped each key expertly with the batarang, then handed it sweetly to Bruce. "Thank you," she said brightly. Then she pointed to the key on the left and turned to Clark.

"Now you turn that one. On three…"

He looked helplessly at Bruce, who nodded again while Selina counted, "One- Two- Three."

They turned the keys in unison, producing a sturdy double click within the mechanism as the lock released.

"Not bad, hm? Was that about two minutes, counting the trip to the bedroom to get the batarang?"

"Three minutes and ten seconds from when you began your inspection," Bruce said grimly.

"Like I said, not bad," Selina beamed, blowing on her nails and buffing one as if shining a claw.

Bruce glanced at Clark, uncertain how to proceed…

There _was_ that last rooftop before they left Gotham. _"Did we ride in together tonight so I would be stuck with you as my ride home and it would be damn tricky for me to take the Egyptian Wing home in the back of the Batmobile?" "Did you at least consider the possibility that I might Watergate it?" _ Then here in Metropolis, her delight baiting Superman that first afternoon, her thrilled amusement when he suspected her… And of course there was Nigma's offer, the Einstein notebooks were 'Catworthy.' She said it was nice to be asked… As much as Bruce was sickened by the possibility before them, Selina wouldn't be. He could just tell her. She'd probably be delighted.

"At the train station, Nigma tried to grab the courier delivering the notebooks in this case, but the courier didn't have the means to open it. I think that's why he wanted you here in Metropolis. If he got his hands on this case, he'd need you to finish the job."

Selina smiled, Cheshire style, then she reached over and kissed his cheek. She was delighted, just as he thought.

"The bump keys are from Kittlemeier," she said with a grin. "Eddie's got a set; he wouldn't need me for a silly thing like that."

"Are you sure?" he graveled.

"Absolutely."

"DAMNIT!" Bruce slammed his fist so hard and so suddenly against the case that Clark jumped. Selina didn't appear to notice.

"You're sure?!" he asked again.

"That Eddie has a couple bump keys? Yes. That he knows how to use them? Yes again. Bruce, what's going on?"

"I don't know what he's after, that's what going on," he barked angrily.

"The notebooks."

"Yes, superficially the notebooks. But, but there seems to be more. He seems to be… including you too much. I thought maybe this was why."

"Bruce, you know I'm not in any danger from Eddie."

"Maybe not, but you are involved. He sent you the 'E.'"

"Yes, he sent you an 'E' too."

Bruce swallowed.

"I'm the enemy," he said grimly.

Selina flicked her finger subtly to Clark, who took a step towards the window and gazed out as if he'd never seen such a view.

"Bruce, I love you," she purred softly. "But you have a hero-addled brain that just _doesn't get it_. He took out a full-page ad in the newspaper, he put a riddle tutorial up on the scoreboard, he kidnapped Lois Lane—that's the See Spot Run of crime in Metropolis—and Spitcurl didn't notice. So he sent for who he knows. We're not 'the enemy,' we're _home_."

Bruce rubbed his eyes and massaged his forehead.

"Einstein once said, 'Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler.' I don't think this is quite that simple."

∞ ∞ ∞  
If A equals success, then the formula is: A X + Y + Z  
X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.  
—Albert Einstein  
∞ ∞ ∞

Only one building remained from the first Metropolis World's Fair in 1893. It had been the Palace of Fine Arts, the only structure built to be permanent. Because of the priceless art treasures it would contain, on loan from the capitals of the Europe, the slap-dash temporary construction used for the rest of the fair would not do. For fire and insurance purposes, it was built to last, even though it was destined to close like all the others at the conclusion of the fair. It was refaced and strengthened in the 1930s, and finally reopened as the Metropolis Museum of Science and Industry.

Selina said she'd be happy to "look over" the facility and give Superman a frank appraisal of their security. She went out that afternoon to walk through the public areas as an ordinary visitor and planned to return after dark as Catwoman.

Batman and Superman waited across the street in Kesel Park, keeping a sharp eye on the building.

"Just so I understand," Superman said with exaggerated dignity, "we have to be here just in case my asking her to do this was part of Riddler's plan, and Catwoman being in there right now with the notebooks is playing into his hands?"

"Correct," Batman graveled.

"But she can't know we're here because…?"

"She wouldn't like it."

Superman glanced at the dome of the building from where he just heard her whisper his name. Looking through the shell, he saw Catwoman lowering herself into the rotunda.

"She knows," he said flatly.

Batman turned to him, scowling.

"She just told me," Superman explained. "She must have picked up on your little trick to talk to me in public. She says she knows we're here, and you shouldn't be … um, shouldn't be such a …"

"Tightass?"

"Yes."

Batman's lip twitched.

"She doesn't know. She doesn't even know you can hear her. She's just playing a hunch."

"You sure?"

Batman shrugged.

"You can never be sure about a cat, Clark. You can only be sure about the woman. 'Tightass' sounds like the woman."

Superman merely stared. Batman rummaged in his utility belt for the scrap of paper he'd taken from Riddler's lair.

"Not to change the subject but perhaps you can explain this," he said, handing over the slip from a Daily Planet notepad, just like the ones on Clark and Lois's desks. "That is your handwriting, I believe."

"Ehhh," Superman floundered.

"Catwoman. Bank rob. Priority CATch." Batman read.

"Eh, well," Superman began haltingly.

"Then the 'cat' in 'catch' is underlined three times," Batman noted.

"Well, eh," Superman muttered for variety.

"The diamond-shaped doodle in the lower corner looks like your emblem." Batman added.

"It doesn't refer to her, obviously," Superman said hurriedly. "It's the one in New Zealand. See, Selina had called me the day the story broke and, well, I felt I should do something."

Batman glared.

"To catch the one in New Zealand I mean."

Batman glared.

"Just to protect Selina's good name, you understand."

Batman glared.

"Okay, okay. She pushed my buttons and I decided some very serious law enforcement was called for in response."

Batman ceased glaring and turned away to face the museum again.

"Can't think why I'd expect you to sympathize on that one," Superman muttered.

* * *

…to be concluded…


	8. Relativity

**Riddle Me-Tropolis**_  
Chapter 8: Relativity_

* * *

Waiting. All crimefighters have to do it sometimes. Whether it's high tech surveillance of a DEMON compound, results of an autopsy, chemical analysis, or an Oracle superhack, there are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day. Even for Batman. Even for Superman.

Of course it could seem longer. Catwoman was breaking into the Science and Industry Museum, poking and prodding the building security, and searching the offices for information on upcoming plans, while the World's Finest Heroes stood across the street in Kesel Park keeping an eye on the building from a distance. They had been standing there for twelve and a half minutes that took three hours to elapse. Occasionally Catwoman uttered some detail: the dome was 125 feet high with a 60 foot diameter, the main hall was 300 by 500 with two annexes 120 by 200… Superman had no idea if this information was meant for his ears or if she was taking verbal notes into a recorder – or maybe just talking to herself. At the six minute mark, real time (or hour two, Superman time), the monologue stopped abruptly. Superman winced, holding his ears and clenching his teeth as a high pitched squeal bored into his skull for fourteen seconds that went on for two years. Batman guessed the tone was a "meta-frequency pulse she's using to disconnect the office alarms," but that was only because he couldn't hear it. Anyone who actually heard that excruciating sound spike would never call it a "pulse." He would call it what it was: the Meta-frequency Era, like the Paleozoic except with ultrasound brainspikes instead of trilobites.

Finally, six and a half minutes later, real time (hour three, Superman time), Batman's communicator vibrated. _ ..:Since Spitcurl is pretending he can't hear me:.. _she said.

They rendezvoused on the dome, Batman asked for the SitRep, and Catwoman began the oddest situation report Superman had ever heard. It began with "good news and bad news." The good: the museum's security wasn't too shabby. Clark beamed at this, mentally scoring one point for Metropolis while Catwoman elaborated: The vault where the notebooks were now stored seemed perfectly adequate to keep them safe from "Catman through Shadow Thief (pfft)" until the formal unveiling. She had broken into the administration offices as well and looked over the plans for the final exhibit where the books would be permanently housed. It "needed some tweaking of course" because the museum had brought in "our old pals Foster and Forsythe"—the mere mention of which made Batman's eyes roll. It felt like Clark's first day in the Daily Planet bullpen, a whirr of jargon and allusions that sounded like English but made no sense to the uninitiated. Catwoman said this Foster and Forsythe had "indulged their laser fetish again," and bemoaned "that movie" –presumably _Entrapment_ since she went on to reference "another security system inspired by Catherine Zeta Jones's ass."

Superman was beginning to wonder if he shouldn't bring Martian Manhunter onto the case for a telepathic translation, when Batman took pity and provided one: "Catman through Shadow Thief" represented a range of thieving abilities, Catman on the relatively low end of the scale; Shadow Thief on the upper— in his opinion as the experienced crimefighter who made up the scale in the first place. He was quick to add that before Selina could interrupt. It was an opinion she clearly didn't share, hence the parenthetical _pfft_. Foster and Forsythe were security consultants. The junior partner had been police commissioner when Catwoman first became active in Gotham, and the senior partner had actually designed the security for the gallery where Bat and Cat had their first encounter. In later years, they'd used an excessive amount of visible motion sensors and electric eyes, probably based on the movie _Entrapment_, which Selina had considered a wonderful screwball comedy until she started seeing those red lasers pop up all over town.

"Are you done?" Catwoman asked when Batman had finished.

He said nothing but his lip twitched, and she meowed. Again, Superman felt he was the stranger in a strange land. Metropolis was his city (to borrow the phrase) but these Gothamites somehow transformed little patches of it into "Gotham West" wherever they came together.

After another few grunting/purring allusions to arguments they'd obviously had a hundred times before, Catwoman continued her briefing: The good news: the vault where the Einstein notebooks were now stored and their "final resting place" in the exhibit hall were fine. The bad news—part 1: Did Superman know they had four different kinds of kryptonite in that place?

He did. He explained briefly that he'd met with the curators when the exhibit first opened. He didn't _like_ having actual samples of the deadly substance on display in a public museum, but "in the best interest of humanity" was a hard argument for him to counter. The very fact that it was kryptonite, "the real thing from Superman's home planet," got kids excited about science. They left the display talking about crystal structure, chemical formulas, and the thermochemical nature of a material that could be calculated once you determined certain physical properties. Who was he to keep impressionable young minds from learning about the wonders of their universe, especially at a time in their lives when it might become a career and vocation?

Catwoman looked at Batman, who shrugged.

"The bad news—part 2," she continued gamely. "The intermediary step between the perfectly good storage vault and the perfectly good exhibit, the stunt all cultural institutions have to pull on occasions like this. Any guesses?"

"Throwing a big party to unveil their new acquisition to the world," Batman graveled.

"Give that man a kiss," she grinned, leaning over to impart one while Superman turned his attention to the lovely view of Lake Metropolis.

"When I was in the director's office," Catwoman continued, "looking for the exhibit plans, I found the _other _plans. For the "Attention Criminals Who Want Our Stuff, We're Having A Party" Party."

"Please tell me it's not a costume party," Batman sighed.

"No," she grinned, "Guess we lucked out there. No Ashton-Larrabys on the board. But anyway, there is going to be a party and that's when he's going to go for them, no doubt of it. Eddie's not bad with a Gotham Yacht Club caliber alarm system, but he's not up to this place without six months of prep time and some serious Pilates."

"And when is this _party_?" Batman growled, pronouncing the last word with a disgust usually reserved for the words "early release" or "handgun."

"That's bad news—part 3," she answered. "Two weeks."

Batman's fist clenched, Hell Month style, as he envisioned more nights away from his city.

"Come on, Handsome," Catwoman soothed, "You know what these shindigs are like. There's no way they could put it together in less time."

He glared.

"Good news part 2, Lois and I get to dress up," she teased playfully.

"Bad news part 4, I hate that tux," Superman put in.

Batman shifted his glare. Two weeks would feel like months if Clark started echoing Catwoman's patter that way.

* * *

By the time Selina filled out the order for the next day's breakfast, Bruce was finalizing his plans. He could manage a patrol in Gotham three nights each week while still maintaining a presence in Metropolis. Leaving the city completely was out of the question. If Nigma thought his preferred adversary had left town, it might provoke a reaction. He might change his timetable and that was the last thing Batman wanted. Catwoman as good as told him that Riddler did not have the skill set to break into the museum without her help, and desperation was inherently dangerous in a rogue, any rogue. The thought of Riddler improvising something where Catwoman was involved was a nightmare of variables and permutations too numerous to prepare for. Given the tradeoff between missed patrols in Gotham and unleashing a dangerously unpredictable Riddler in Metropolis, there was no "question mark." Until those notebooks were secured in the permanent exhibit, he and Selina had to keep up a presence in Superman's city.

Between the Batwing, the JLA transporter at STAR Labs, and some skillful manipulation of the Monitor rota at the Watchtower, he could still manage three early patrols in Gotham, and on one of those occasions even work in a late patrol without any great loss of sleep or travel time. Bruce Wayne could still make an appearance in Metropolis the next day. As long as Selina remained in the city while he was gone, there would be nothing to trigger Nigma's suspicions—unless of course Batman made news in Gotham. It was a minor risk. The underworld still hadn't recovered from the massive roundup of 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th tier rogues leading up to the Gotham Post fundraiser, and the At Large list…

Bruce's concentration was shattered suddenly when Selina strolled into the room naked, saying something about taking a bath if he wasn't coming to bed. Bruce had no earthly idea what he said in reply, but he must have said something because she left and he heard the water turn on in the distance. He sat there stunned for a moment, trying to recover.

_What_ had just happened to him?

Well, Selina came into the room naked, obviously. But striking as she was, he'd seen her naked before and it never had that effect. His mind strained to find its way back to its last clear thought… The At Large list, that was it. The At Large list was still gratifyingly short… Of course. He was still in Bat-mode, that's why he reacted the way he did. He was in Bat-mode just as the same as if he was in the Batcave thinking through the night's patrol as he wrote up the log. He might be wearing a hotel robe instead of the costume, and the suite's living room might resemble one of the manor drawing rooms more than the Batcave, but he was still completely in Bat-mode. He had seen Selina naked before, certainly, but not _in the Batcave while Batman was trying to work_. No wonder his brain shut down from the shock.

PsychoBat swatted away the last vestige of her image and returned to the issue at hand: Despite the short At Large list, Batman could conceivably catch a name villain during one of those stolen patrols in Gotham…

By the time Selina was stepping out of the bathtub, he had developed a protocol. Bat Out of Gotham, Protocol Alpha: In case of a high-profile takedown of a prominent rogue, they could scramble the Iceberg grapevine to cover up his involvement. Conflicting reports of Nightwing, Robin, and Batgirl all apprehending the same criminal would lead any savvy listener to conclude that the villain was really captured by one of the junior vigilantes or maybe even ordinary police. Captured by someone they considered beneath them, the rogue lied and said it was Batman to save face. Protocol end.

That covered the first half of the problem: looking in on Gotham. Keeping things under control in Metropolis was another matter, one that required a Bruce Wayne protocol rather than Batman's. First thing in the morning, he would set up a sizable endowment for the Science and Industry Museum, producing the inevitable offer of a seat on their board. It would only take a phone call to deflect the honor onto Selina and insert her into event committee planning the party.

He went into the bedroom and crawled into bed beside her, feeling like a heel. He loved Selina and he knew the hell she'd be in for. To make executing this particular scheme easier, he imagined Batman looking past those impossibly green eyes and grabbing her wrist with a crimefighter's resolve—and then seeing the slivers of body armor and his own flesh under her claws. He reminded himself of the bullwhip, the cat-o-nine tails, and the countless gems, artworks, and antiquities she'd gotten away with over the years. If he'd caught her on any of those occasions, he could have taken her to Blackgate. Instead he was sending her to an event committee. It was Justice.

Besides, it was only for two weeks. It could have taken her two weeks to escape from Blackgate.

Theoretically.

* * *

Clark was beginning to feel Catwoman's "Bad News Part 1," the four kinds of kryptonite in the science museum, paled in comparison to the Good News Part 2, Lois had a reason to get dressed up.

No ordinary cocktail dress would do for the Einstein party, not when Bruce Moneybags Wayne was going to be in attendance. Oh no, of course not. Bruce and Selina had already seen the green Calvin Klein and the blue Casselberry; the beige sequins were too dressy and the black lace too matronly. Her arms would get cold if she wore the old Halston, and she didn't have shoes for it anymore anyway…

Clark had no idea what she was talking about, but he nodded anyway. That was the safe thing to do; that had always been the safe thing to do. Except tonight it turned out to be a huge mistake because he wound up agreeing that she was getting a bit too old to pull off "Paris pink."

Lois did what any woman would do under the circumstances: She picked up the phone, called Selina for a shopping date at Bloomingdale's, and then turned to her husband with the sweetest of smiles and declared "Really Clark, it's not like you _need_ a new car next year, now is it?"

Clark did what any man would do under the circumstances (if he could fly): he went to New Zealand to track down a Catwoman bank robber.

* * *

The Trigger Twins, that was a name no one had heard in a while. Bruce's Batman had little experience with Tom and Ted Trigger. They had surfaced during Jean Paul's stint in the mantel, and Bruce had always assumed the contempt with which first-tier rogues spoke of them was just another example of their disdain for all things "AzBat." But now that he'd actually seen the twins robbing a defunct Planet Hollywood to score a pair of Clint Eastwood pistols before they were sold at auction, he found himself in the uncomfortable position of agreeing with Joker, Two-Face, Riddler and Penguin. The Trigger Twins were pathetic losers that hardly justified the wear and tear on his gauntlets let alone the jetfuel back to Metropolis.

Selina's reaction to the capture didn't help. She lay in bed, filing her nails, projecting that injured dignity like the time Batman prevented her absconding with the Katz collection and she somehow made it seem like she was the injured party.

"So, no more Gotham patrols until Friday?" she asked casually.

"No, not until Friday," he graveled, feeling he was stepping into a trap.

"Good, because I was just thinking, maybe next time I could go to Gotham and pummel while you stay here and work out the desserts for the gala."

He pointed out that, wretched and incompetent as the Trigger Twins might be at their chosen profession, they were technically thieves, as in _criminals,_ as in _crime_, and that catching them therefore constituted crime-fighting.

She pointed out that she'd spent two hours that afternoon listening to the Metropolis Ladies Who Lunch debating Banana Nut Glace – that's (Listen up, Dark Knight, cause this might be important later on) walnut ice cream, banana sorbet and walnut dacquoise with candied walnuts – versus the Lavender Plum torte – which would be lavender ice cream with plum sorbet, almond dacquoise, and caramelized vanilla bean. Bruce tried to interject, but she cut him off with the news that the committee ladies _THEN_ discovered there were chocolate apricot and spiced pear options to be considered, and that meant another hour and a half of discussion until they ran out of time. They would be picking up there tomorrow before the cassis mango meringue versus mint chocolate macaroon throwdown. So at this point, Batman my love, kicking Ted Trigger in the nuts wasn't the worst idea she could think of, even if it was crimefighting.

* * *

The night before the party, Bruce and Selina were having a quiet, casual dinner in the suite. Bruce was telling her about an early teamup with Superman – or as he put it, "the one time Clark _ really_ came to the rescue." He was cornered, not in an alley or a battlefield but at the opening of a reconstructive surgery unit. It was the Wayne Foundation's largest medical endowment up to that time, but the Foundation wasn't the only contributor. Lex Luthor had written the biggest check, and he'd cornered Bruce at the opening, wanting an alliance. Together they could wrest control of the medical center from the current small-minded administrators and steer it in a more lucrative direction. Bruce made a typically foppish excuse about being in Monte Carlo by the time Luthor was ready to move, and Lex said that would be no problem at all if Bruce would sign a proxy. It was an amateur mistake, but Bruce was new to the fop act and he'd underestimated Luthor. Of course the bimbo of the moment was no help at all…

"Wait, let me guess," Selina interrupted with a grin. "Whatshername-Gretta?"

Bruce took a dignified sip of water. It was true he made no effort to learn the names of women that were not worth remembering, and he refused to feel ashamed of that fact.

"No, it wasn't 'whatshername-Gretta,'" he answered, although he did use that designation for most of the bimbos. "I do remember this one. Her name was Savanah Summer."

Selina laughed.

"Oh come on, Bruce, it's one thing to not remember; it's another entirely to make up a name just to …"

She trailed off, for the atmosphere at the table had suddenly changed. Bruce had undergone the eerie density-shift that marked a swift transition into Bat-mode, and Selina felt that electric tingle that once warned Catwoman whenever Batman was near.

"What is it?" Selina asked, quietly excited.

Bruce set down his sandwich and walked to the window.

"There," he pointed.

She looked, blinked, chuckled as the sight registered, and then apologized, knowing his prejudice against laughter in the face of _grunt_-signs of criminal activity-_grunt_. Down the street, on the face of the tallest skyscraper facing the hotel, a crossword puzzle appeared in the pattern of lit and darkened windows.

"Quick, where's today's paper," he ordered.

Selina rummaged and soon found the Daily Planet that came with their room service breakfast each morning. She opened it and turned to the crossword before handing it over.

"It's not the same puzzle," she said, disappointed.

"Find yesterday's. I know I've seen that pattern recently."

Selina shook her head.

"No way, Stud. They're too damn efficient emptying the waste baskets in this place."

Before she had finished speaking, Bruce was powering up his laptop.

"Here," he spat, "You can get started, while I change. See if you can hack into the Planet's system and go through the back issues. If you can't get in in five minutes, call Barbara."

"Now you're just trying to make me mad," Selina growled as he left.

Three minutes later, Batman returned from the bedroom and Selina reported curtly that she'd checked nearly two weeks of Daily Planet puzzles and none matched the pattern across the street.

He grunted.

"Ok, I don't want you wasting any more time on it. I'll send Oracle a photo and let her sift through all the metropolitan newspapers for as far back as it takes to find… … …"

"To find…?" Selina prompted.

"It," he murmured softly. He had taken a small digital camera from his utility belt but rather than pointing it out the window he was simply staring at it.

"Bruce?" Selina whispered.

He swiveled the laptop around to see the screen and began tapping keys urgently.

"Or maybe I already have taken a picture of it— _ There_." He turned the screen back around so Selina could see, revealing a photo he'd taken in Riddler's pseudo-lair in the Daily Planet building. A piece of faux-art in the form of a large crossword puzzle, complete with clues, hung against a Riddler green wall.

"There it is," he announced. "The crossword from the lair matches the one across the street."

"I assume you've solved this one already?" Selina asked dryly.

"Yes," he punched a key and brought up the completed puzzle. "The night I found it. But there was nothing in the clues or the answers that related to Einstein, Metropolis or the museum."

"Woof."

"Yes, woof," he agreed.

"Well, if the answer isn't here," Selina said, getting up and walking back to the window, "then it must be out there, in the Lite-Brite version of the puzzle, right?"

"His last 'Lite-Brite' was a decoy," Batman noted.

"Well yes, I guess it was. But I didn't mean to imply a connection to the bomb scare at the train station. I just didn't know how else to refer to that thing."

Batman rubbed his chin.

"The last Lite-Brite was also meant to occupy _ Clark_," he said.

"Agreed, but this one is definitely pointed at _ us_."

"Let's make sure," he said, switching off the lights. "Lenses engage. Infrared."

He looked out the window again, and grunted.

"Just as I thought. Some of those lights are tinted on a spectrum we can't see. Go to the computer, read off the letters in the boxes I call out."

She did, and within minutes they had spelled out TRY GALA PERIL SIN.

"Maybe it's just the heads up that he's going to hit the party," Selina suggested.

"Maybe," he replied, scribbling out a few variations. He didn't like that word 'PERIL' in there, but it was better than the TRY GALA variations that ended with R.I.P. He rearranged the letters several times to eliminate the subtextual threats, and then cursed himself for it. You could make anagrams of this length point to almost anything. He was indulging his own preference that the clue not include a threat when it was directed at Selina as much as himself. That was no way to solve a Riddler clue and he knew it. The only way to solve it was to get inside Nigma's head. He looked up suddenly at Selina, and then back at the letters.

**L-I-N-A**, he wrote.

"Your name is in here," he graveled.

She looked over his shoulder.

"Doesn't leave you enough 'A's to spell 'GALA' that way," she said.

"No," he murmured as he scribbled again. "But…"

**P-A-R-T-Y**

Selina let out a low whistle.

"What does that leave?" she asked breathlessly.

**S-E** he added before **L-I-N-A**. And then after **PARTY** he arranged the remaining letters to spell out **G-I-R-L**.

* * *

Clark wasn't discouraged that his first attempts at flirting had gone pretty much unnoticed. He was disappointed, naturally, but he was far from defeated. As a young man, it had taken weeks to master his heat vision and he'd set the barn on fire more than once trying. It took more than a month to perfect flying through storm systems and he'd landed face down in the Pacific more often than he liked to remember. And like any journalist worthy of the name, he was still honing his writing skills, every day on every story, even after all these years on the job. Pa always said if something is worth doing, it's worth the elbow grease learning to do it right. Handing Bruce and Lois a little friendly payback for the decade of Wayne/Lane flirting paraded in front of him was definitely worth the elbow grease. And the Einstein party would be the perfect place to get it right. Selina would be dressed up, looking her best, and Bruce and Lois would be on hand to see him notice.

But, eh, meeting Selina in the receiving line, Clark decided to wait a bit. She did look her best, there was no question about that, but she also looked like an angry lioness that might pounce at any minute, ripping the throat from whatever unfortunate antelope happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was a ferocious Catwoman aura that only Bruce found appealing – which worked out well as he seemed to be the object for her ire. She was stuck in the receiving line because he'd put her on the event committee. He was already inside "acquainting himself with the layout of the party," she said—a process which looked remarkably like getting himself a drink from the bar. Clark bid Selina a hurried farewell as Lois went ahead to join Bruce.

It occurred to him that it was Riddler's fault as much as Bruce's that she was stuck on that committee, and if they were such good friends as Bruce implied, the villain would have no chance getting past her in disguise. If Edward Nigma did come into the party in the normal way, through the front entrance and receiving line, there might be no robbery to foil, for the lioness might attack him on sight and devour him where he stood.

"Why Bruce, you get handsomer and handsomer every time I see you," Lois was saying as Clark caught up with them.

_Here we go again, _Clark thought sourly as Bruce answered her with a preposterous playboy grin.

"Hello Lois, my you look lovely. Is that a new dress? Red certainly is your color."

Clark wondered if this was an instinctive return to the fop in a social setting where it was really Batman "in a Bruce Wayne suit" and not Bruce himself attending the party, or if possibly Bruce was getting the flirting-with-Lois bit out of the way so he could concentrate on Nigma for the rest of the night. In either case, Lois was eating it up, turning slowly and showing off her dress.

"Of course, brand new. Bought it specially for you, Bossman."

"Oh, I read that piece on Uzbekistan," Bruce went on, moving on to Lois's career now that they'd apparently finished with her evening gown. "Is there room on the mantle for another Pulitzer?"

"Aren't you a dear!" she exclaimed, delighted. "Some things I'll always make room for. On my dance card, for instance. You'll save me one, I hope?"

"Why Lois, what would Clark Whatever say? Er, I mean, _ whatever_ would Clark say?"

A duet of nauseating laughter followed, and Clark cleared his throat.

"Not planning to dance," he said with a playing along grin, "Seeing as the dance floor is in the Hall of Giant Robots that Superman destroyed over the years, protecting the city and its people, and even Lois herself, from every menace that's come along."

Lois politely disengaged from Bruce and slid her arm back around her husband's, who had saved her from all sixteen giant robots on various occasions.

* * *

Lois Lane's mother taught her that a woman's evening bag should be just large enough to contain a lipstick, a handkerchief, and a folded 20 bill. Lois's was a bit bigger, just large enough to contain her cell phone, a credit card and her press pass. It might be a party, but it was an unusual party with an unusual mix of people, and she was chasing six different stories just in case there wasn't a SUPERMAN NABS RIDDLER headline by the end of the evening.

Knowing he wasn't her husband on these occasions but a rival reporter, Clark left her to it and crossed the hall to join Bruce… at a display of alien species that had attacked Metropolis over the years, all lovingly re-created in lifelike resins by the WETA workshop.

"Giant mind control starfish?" Bruce observed with a hint of foppish condescension. "I can't see your Superman saying anything about Gotham villains." Then he lifted his glass to his mouth and added in a barely audible whisper "Other than if mind control starfish came to Gotham and set up shop inside Knight's Stadium on game day, I'd have noticed."

It takes kryptonian muscle control to make a nine syllable phrase like "Catwoman Protocol Epsilon" sound like a cough, but Clark managed it – just barely – before the receiving line dissolved and he saw the reason for the original Catwoman Protocol Epsilon bearing down on them. The lioness still looked too angry to flirt with, but Clark still anticipated her arrival with a certain ignoble glee. "If mind control starfish came to Gotham" indeed.

But Selina's determined march stopped three steps short of Bruce, and she turned her fiery glare on Clark with that distinct "Curse you, Superman" expression they all get when he's foiled some scheme they've been planning for months.

"What did you do?" she demanded. "I heard you went to the buffet, turned green, clutched your stomach and dropped your fork. Now nobody's eating the shrimp!"

"I was talking to Dr. Hamilton," Clark explained, "and he walked me too close to… to _that case_. What could I do? I couldn't just end the conversation and walk away saying space rocks make me ill."

"Four hours of discussion about that shrimp, Clark. Kitty is not happy. Also not a lot of dancing going on in the Hall of Giant Robots, so maybe you should find your wife and get that started."

Clark turned to Bruce—only to discover he was no longer there.

* * *

Bruce knew where the notebooks were being kept before the formal unveiling. He could see where Selina was standing, and knowing these were the two points of interest for Nigma, he spent the first hour of the party forming the third point of a triangle between them. Whenever she moved, he moved… The strategy was working beautifully until he ran into Perry White, literally. Perry had been standing in front of a wall near the coat check, scrutinizing a small placard, and Bruce was keeping his eye on Selina as he maneuvered to keep both her and the notebooks in sight. After the collision and mutual apologies, Perry declared that he was "celebrating 28 days without a cigar and praying for death." Then he drew Bruce's attention to the plaque he'd been reading: _In order to provide a healthy and comfortable environment for all our visitors and in accordance with Local Ordinance Governing Public Spaces #160-24, The Metropolis Museum of Science and Industry is a smoke-free facility._

"Now that's some piss poor copy," Perry said acidly. "'No Smoking' covers it, or that little circle with the slash would do. One column inch either way, no more. That's when civilization went to hell in a handbasket, Wayne, when they started making the no smoking signs _chatty_. We're not having a colloquy, goddamnit, just tell the poor bastards they can't light up in here and be done with it."

Bruce offered a sympathetic, not-too-foppish smile as he looked around for Selina. He'd seen her moving behind a lucite cross section of a glacier somewhere around the time civilization was going to hell in a handbasket, but since the glacier was mostly transparent he hadn't worried about it. By the time Perry was declaring decaf a communist plot that had outlived the Stalinist fiends who invented it, Bruce saw her disappear behind a dinosaur skeleton. He craned his neck while Perry ranted about the layers of disinformation and cherry-picked data about second-hand smoke, and midway through Perry's indictment of herbal tea, he lost sight of her completely.

Bruce patted Perry's shoulder, said they'd have to do lunch some time soon, and made his getaway. As he circulated through the party looking for Selina, he noticed something else instead. There was an old exhibit at the entrance to the North Annex, adjacent to but not quite a part of the main hall where the partygoers were clustered. The exhibit, called Moments of Invention, featured waxworks style tableau depicting the Eureka moments of inventors from John Gutenberg to Robert Fulton. In one of these, Samuel Morse was working on his telegraph in a cramped one room studio-bedroom-workshop that accurately depicted the impoverished means in which the inventor then lived— depicted it accurately _except_ for a beautiful, mahogany rolltop desk, which was certainly in period but ludicrously out of place in the humble setting.

Bruce walked up to the display, getting as close as he could to the desk, and then turned his back as if looking out at the pleasant revelry of the party. He reached behind his back, and lifted the slatted cover about an inch.

"Evening, Edward," he said mildly.

"Shit," the desk cursed.

"I assume the lights go out at some point, you come out, collect the notebooks and hide them for later retrieval?"

"Rather not say," came the reply, accented with a pained dignity seldom expressed by furniture.

"You're aware that Selina sat through six days of meetings planning this thing?"

"… The buffet looks very nice," the desk admitted after a pause.

Here, the verbal joust was suspended as Paula Winn spotted Bruce standing alone and apart from the crowd, and felt she really must say hello. After all, he'd made that huge donation to the museum, and all because she'd made an effort to overcome her fear and tell him about the notebooks. Bruce slammed down the cover of the rolltop at her approach, and it expressed its dismay with a muffled "ow."

As always, ten seconds into any conversation with Bruce Wayne, Paula Winn lost the ability to form a coherent thought. She stumbled from sentence to sentence, circling around the one item in which she knew Bruce had an interest, the Einstein notebooks. She wondered if he'd seen the display. There had been much discussion about what kind of quote should appear on the placard. They wanted something whimsical that no one would ever associate with Einstein. One of those Princeton chaps suggested "A question that sometimes drives me crazy: am I or are the others crazy?"

"Really, I never heard that one," Bruce said dryly, covering a squelched cry from inside the desk as Eddie bit his tongue.

Riddler jerked in pain and squirmed as his mouth filled with blood, bumping his remote toggle control to black out the party. Bruce's foppish laugh, meant to camouflage the cry inside the desk, came to an abrupt halt as the lights flickered and the museum was plunged into darkness. Across the room, Clark made a quick exit— and next to the Morse display, Bruce clumsily pounded his fist against the desk while he "steadied himself" from an apparent loss of balance brought about by darkness. Inside the rolltop, Eddie squirmed to reset his toggle control while dabbing at his bleeding tongue with a question mark handkerchief, although in his panic he first dabbed his tongue with the button and pushed feverishly on the handkerchief.

A few moments later, the lights returned— only to reveal Superman hovering over the rotunda in full view of 300 party guests. Bruce sighed, seeing the Man of Steel lower into the crowd, knowing he would be trapped in public relations mode for the rest of the evening. But at least now he had an obvious excuse to steer clear of the kryptonite display.

Paula Winn remained at Bruce's side, picking up her rambling monologue where she left off. "So anyway, we wanted to go with a disarmingly non-intimidating Einstein quote for the entrance to the exhibit, but I guess they decided to go another way because the sign there now says 'When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.' Wouldn't have been my choice, 'Relativity' seems pretty typically Einstein to me, but I was outvoted."

Sensing another squelched cry from the desk was imminent, Bruce did his best to get rid of Paula Winn, finally suggesting she might want to find Lois and "make sure she knew" about Superman's arrival. It wasn't the most inspired excuse he'd ever come up with, but it worked and soon Paula Winn was gone. The rolltop desk unburdened itself as expected.

"That woman is an imbecile! OF COURSE, you use the relativity quote, you silly cow. It's Einstein. Einstein! E equals MC squared, QUAD EQUALS RECS ME, LACQUERED MASQUES, SQUAD SQUEAL CRÈME, Einstein! Oh for a woman who can keep up, Bruce. There aren't enough in this world. How's a man supposed to get through the day with 'Relatively seems pretty typically Einstein' dimwits every time you turn around, and nobody you can go to when it's over and say GOD THESE MORONS DON'T GET IT? Oh for a woman who can keep up—By the way, why isn't Selina wearing my brooch? Didn't you give it to her? Didn't you check out the 'E' office from the puzzle? 12 down. That was a vintage Chanel infinity brooch. You know how she likes Chanel. I really hoped she'd wear it tonight, seeing as it fit right in with the theme and th—eck."

Bruce's patience snapped, and he'd yanked Nigma out of the desk, slammed him back against it, and was ready to punch him back to Gotham— when Eddie looked past the cocked fist aimed at his nose and into the distance in a direct line behind it. His eyes widened as he took in the scene behind Bruce's shoulder, and his mouth dropped open in shock.

"_What_ is he _DOING_?!" Eddie demanded.

Bruce was about to point out that "Hey look behind you" predated cave painting and Nigma must be mad if he thought Bruce would fall… for… and that's when his eyes glimpsed what Nigma was seeing, reflected in Samuel Morse's shaving mirror.

Superman. Talking to Selina… Superman doing the hand on wall/lean in maneuver _over_ Selina (a move which _also_ predated cave painting) while she looked up at him, blushing and giggling like a school girl.

Bruce let go of Nigma's collar, spun around, and watched in staggered horror as Selina encouraged Superman to flex his arm and then proceeded to feel his bicep!

"They've got four kinds of kryptonite in the other room," Eddie said hurriedly. "You wait here, I'll get some."

Bruce turned back and punched him swiftly in the stomach – a light blow, but sufficient to double him over – and then hustled him across the hall to a "PRIVATE STAFF ONLY" door he'd seen hidden behind the giant starfish. As they moved through the crowd, only Perry White and Emil Hamilton seemed to notice them.

"Bad shrimp," Bruce offered by way of explanation.

"Break glass in case of flirty Superman," Nigma called—but alas, they had resumed their conversation.

* * *

In the privacy of the gift shop storage room, Bruce threw Nigma down onto a crate of freeze dried "Astronaut Ice Cream" and pulled up his own crate of rubber asteroid antenna toppers. The two men sat across from each other, glaring in malevolent silence for several moments.

"_WHAT?_" Nigma finally asked, packing a year of thwarted malice into a single defiant syllable.

"For someone that leaves a trail of clues, intentionally _ and unintentionally_, leading up to _everything_ he does, you really have no clue at all, do you Edward?"

The voice was eerily conversational, only grazing the low register of the bat-gravel on a few select words.

"Don't go patting yourself on the back for figuring out the notebooks. I've been pitching you softballs since you got to this pitiful town."

"I'm not talking about the notebooks. I'm talking about you and your fixation on Selina, for more than a year now, since the day you figured it out."

"Wh-," Nigma uttered, sitting back, the first word of an unasked question leaking from his mouth without sound.

"Do you blame her, is that it? You figure she's the reason you finally solved your ultimate riddle, ruining your 'fun' and wrecking any semblance of a goal you had for your twisted career?"

"That's insane," Eddie said archly.

"_You're_ insane, Nigma. It's hardly a stretch to think your motivations might be too. Just look at the 'trail of clues' you've left, _if_ you have the courage to solve the real 'riddle.' What's the first thing you did when you figured it out, hm? Sent a cat clue to the manor, addressed to her. Then you manipulated her, playing on her insecurities to get to me."

"We've been over that," Eddie said defiantly.

"Yes. We've 'been over it.' And now we have this litany of cat tie-ins ever since you got to Metropolis. Shall I name them?"

"Oh come off it, Bruce, you know what she's like. You can't very well have a meaningful exchange with her without referencing cats."

"Not the point."

"Then WHAT IS the point, hm? Answer me that? What is the point of all this?"

"No, Edward. _You_ answer that one."

Eddie swallowed, his eyes darting around until they happen to fall on a roll of posters reproducing the museum's kryptonite display. He clicked his tongue, changing the subject.

"Four different kinds of kryptonite in this place. Really seems a bit much, doesn't it? How many kinds are there altogether? I keep thinking there should be some kind of Franklin Mint collector's set. Every two months we send you a new color to try. You have 30 days to decide. If you keep it, three easy payments of 49.95…"

Bruce glared piteously.

"Why did you bring us to Metropolis, Riddler?"

"Because the best way to get back at Superman for ignoring me was to give him a headache. You're the headache!"

"No. That doesn't explain her."

"Nothing _explains_ her, Bruce, she's a _ cat_. They're like that, they get into everything, they find a way no matter what you do. Leaving Gotham to get away from Gotham, fine. Leaving Gotham to get away from you, doable. Leaving Gotham to get away from Catwoman? HOPELESS! Absolutely hopeless! I've got felinity crossing my path every which way I turn!"

Bruce said nothing but a subtle downshift in his glare led Eddie to guess, "I bet you know what that one feels like."

The readjusted glare that answered him was sufficiently frightening that Eddie inadvertently bumped his toggle again, plunging the party into darkness once more. There was a distant chorus of surprised exclamations while Bruce's fist shot out, latched onto Nigma's jacket, and yanked the control switch out through the sleeve. He clicked the button once, restoring light to the party, and then tightened his fist until the flimsy control was crushed to powder.

"Look, I am not in love with Selina," Eddie blurted, rather than sink into another round of silent stares.

"Of course you're not. You're not even obsessed with Selina. You're obsessed with Selina _and me_."

"That's absurd."

"Is it? Cat clue to the house. Using her to get to me at the MOMA. You summon us both here with those ridiculous 'E's. Are you really so petty that you can't stomach her being happy with me?"

Eddie was on his feet, and he "paced" to the extent the tiny storage room would allow. It really amounted to stretching his legs and shifting his weight a few times, but the effort did help him think. Okay, yes, Selina was his friend and he didn't want to risk getting her killed if he exposed Bruce's secrets. In that sense, she had messed up his great triumph solving the Riddle of Riddles. He'd finally answered the ultimate question, "Who is Batman under that mask?" but he couldn't enjoy it because of her. But if that were the real root of his problem, he could work around it. It was just another riddle, after all, a more tantalizing riddle than the one he'd just solved: If Selina is with Bruce Wayne and Bruce Wayne is Batman, how do I strike at the one without harming the other? Selina's involvement with Wayne saved him from the anti-climax he might otherwise be facing. He would be grateful if that's all there was to it. So what did that leave? It's not like he was the third member of some great romantic triangle and couldn't bear to see her with another man. But _ something_ about it all bothered him. Something had him tied in knots… And - atypically for him - instead of trying to unravel the puzzle, he'd been running from it.

"No, as a matter of fact, it's _not_ that she's happy with you," Eddie smirked, victorious but saddened by the answer that presented itself. "It's that you're happy with her."

"I thought as much," Bruce said flatly. "'Oh for a woman who can keep up'," he quoted, "or perhaps 'Why can't I have that?'"

Eddie took in a sharp, angry breath, then nodded.

Bruce resumed the eerie conversational tone in which he'd begun.

"Word of advice, Edward, which of course you're free to accept and forget where it came from, or ignore entirely. For someone so dedicated to answering the 'ultimate' questions, there should be a lot less 'Who is Batman' and related trivia, and a lot more 'How do I get back to the only time in my adult life that I was happy?' Which was with Doris, you jackass."

The name hit Edward Nigma harder than any punch Batman had ever thrown. He barely processed the words that came next.

"…So figure out how to get her back or find it with someone else. Either way, **leave me out of it**…"

A self-preservation instinct kicked in when the menacing Bat-gravel delivered the final words.

**"And leave her out of it."**

"Or…?" Eddie asked, wheeling around, daring the arrogant blowhard to complete the threat…

But he was alone.

"I hate when he does that," Eddie confided to the plastic kryptonite.

* * *

"We're leaving," Bruce ordered, grabbing Selina savagely by the wrist and pulling her away from Superman in a forced march to the door, during which she barely managed to say goodnight to Lois, Emil Hamilton and Evelyn Garr as they passed.

She was professional enough to wait until they were safely outside the museum before she hissed, pulled her hand free, and snarled for an explanation.

"It's over," Bruce said crisply. "I confronted Nigma and it's over; all that remains now is letting him save face. A Superman capture will accomplish that; a Bat-capture won't. And nothing can happen in front of you. You have to be far from Metropolis when it goes down. If we hurry, Wayne One can be in the air by the time Clark figures out the rolltop desk in the telegraph display is lead-lined."

* * *

…to the epilogue…


	9. Epilogue

**Riddle Me-Tropolis**_  
Epilogue_

* * *

It wasn't completely unheard of for Bruce to appear in the manor in costume, but it was certainly unusual. Sufficiently unusual that Selina got up to investigate when she saw him pass the door of the morning room in costume except for the mask. It was the look she liked best—usually, but not wandering through the manor like the ghost of Hamlet's father. It was nearly dawn when they got back to Gotham, too late for him to go into the city as Batman but too early to expect Alfred to be up. Bruce said he could at least slip down to the cave and look through the logs before Alfred was up to make breakfast. Selina went to the morning room to sift through the backlog of mail. She was just finishing when she looked up and saw the caped specter passing the door. She followed it into the dining room, where it turned, decanter in hand, to face her.

Selina looked him up and down, and then, unable to come up with a better opening, she meowed.

"I needed a drink," Bruce announced, answering the obvious question. "It's only grain alcohol down in the chem lab."

"Logs must have been pretty bad," Selina guessed.

"There _are_ no logs. I had to call Barbara to find out what happened, and then it took ten minutes to talk her out from behind that hologram."

"Uh oh," was all Selina could think to say, which wasn't helpful so she waited quietly while Bruce poured his drink, took a sip, added another inch of liquid to the glass, and then sat.

"Robin is in the hospital," he began, "Courtesy of Batgirl. He'll be fine, but there may be a lawsuit. St. Stephen's was closer than Leslie's clinic, and they apparently don't have a pat admittance policy for 'masks' the way the larger downtown hospitals do. They weren't going to unmask him or anything; they just didn't have a procedure for no last name, no insurance card, etc. Batgirl took their questions the wrong way, got the idea they wanted to remove his mask, and she uh…"

"_Protected_ his identity?"

"Something like that. Fortunately it was an emergency room and there were plenty of bandages on hand."

"Okay backup, how did Robin wind up in the emergency room 'courtesy of Batgirl' in the first place?"

"She thought the fire extinguisher was a weapon."

"Pour me one of those," Selina ordered, pointing to the brandy.

"I'm telling you the way Barbara told me."

"Don't," she hissed. "Tell me the chronological, anal retentive, cross indexed, footnoted Bat-way that makes sense."

"That's asking a lot," Bruce noted dryly. "Okay. When we left, Tim was being punished for the fake ID. He did okay with the research paper that I assigned and Barbara graded. He wasn't faring so well with Cassie rating his fighting performance. Rather than accept 28 rounds of Zogger, he found an alternative. He started investigating a false identity ring that turned out to be operating out of – where else – the Iceberg.

"Cobblepot wouldn't involve himself in anything that petty. It was just a side business one of his lieutenants was running, but in staking out the Iceberg, Robin discovered something much bigger—or so he thought. Cobblepot has been meeting with Dr. Bartholomew, that's _Arkham's_ Dr. Bartholomew, twice a week. Robin even followed one of the Iceberg hostesses out to Bartholomew's house a few times."

"So what?"

"Robin made a perfectly reasonable inference given the facts on hand. He concluded that Cobblepot must be up to something, manipulating Arkham admissions and releases through Bartholomew. Assuming Bartholomew was being bribed, blackmailed, or mind controlled, he… acted appropriately given what he knew."

"Still no sign of Batgirl or a fire extinguisher in this gripping tale, Stud."

"You wanted it to make sense," he reminded her.

"I also wanted a brandy," she reminded him.

Bruce got up from his chair, took a second glass from the sideboard, poured an inch of brandy into it, and handed it over silently. Then he resumed.

"Tim reasoned that if Bartholomew was being bribed or blackmailed, physical intimidation—"

"Read: 'roughing him up.'"

"—Physical intimidation was the quickest way to get some answers. And if he was being controlled, pain is often an effective means to break the hold. His method was sound; it was just his choice of location that was…ill-considered."

"Hang on," Selina downed her brandy in a gulp. "Okay, hit me."

"He apparently confronted Bartholomew 'in the act' as he was coming out of Oswald's office, as in only steps away from the Iceberg bar. King Snake was having a birthday party in the back, and there was a tray of something called Bourbon Street Blazes. Barbara looked it up and found it's made from Sambucca, Jaeggermeister and high-proof rum."

"That'll burn."

"Yes it will. So will Robin's cape if it's spattered with the stuff."

"Enter the fire extinguisher."

"Which Batgirl thought was a weapon. Her assumption was reasonable too. She saw an old Two-Face henchman running at Robin with an object that looked threatening."

"But she also saw his cape was on fire, right?"

"How would I know, I was in Metropolis talking to a rolltop desk at the time. I'm telling you what Barbara told me."

"Okay, okay. Continue."

"Sambucca, Jaegermeister, high proof rum. It burns. Cobblepot, Sly, Raven, Bartholomew, a dozen Ghost Dragons, a pair of former Two-Face henchmen, Croc and Kiteman all at St. Stephens with mild to moderate smoke inhalation, second and third degree burns, and assorted contusions. Fair to say we've hit a new milestone in Robin/Batgirl conflicts. I think Dick and Barbara's worst fight started with him asking her to do his algebra homework and ended with her gluing him into his gauntlets after he put limburger cheese in her utility belt."

"I don't believe this is the crack team that kept me from the Katz collection," Selina grumbled, rubbing her forehead. "Well, at least they didn't burn down the Iceberg, right?" she sighed, making the best of it.

"Actually…" Bruce began.

"They_ burned down the Iceberg?!_"

"Not _to the ground_, but as of the arson report Barbara was just downloading when I called, it's a hollow cinder that won't be doing business for quite some time."

"My god, Oswald will go nuts!"

"Funny you should put it that way. He's being transferred to Arkham as soon as St. Stephen's is finished with him. Some kind of psychological 'control issues' that have been building since the Gotham Post party."

"Wha-?" Selina asked blankly.

"Selina, We rounded up every first, second, third and fourth tier rogue in the city before that fundraiser. That put a serious dent in Cobblepot's criminal operations, but a worse dent in the legitimate nightclub's regular clientelle. 90 percent of his customers, and all of the customers he cares about, disappeared in a matter of weeks. That role as 'Emperor Penguin,' publicly lording it over his unique criminal empire is a fundamental part of Oswald Cobblepot's being. He _needs_ it. And when he saw it swept out from under him, there was a… reaction."

"So he's been seeing this Bartholomew from Arkham twice a week?"

"That how it looks."

Selina took a deep breath, taking it all in, then looked up at Bruce and started to chuckle.

"Glad to be home?"

He grunted.

* * *

_"By first is a stuff of stars and winter hearths," _Eddie recited, although his swollen nose made the M sound like a B.

The other inmates in the Metropolis Prison infirmary didn't seem to mind. They were gathered around, hanging on the Riddler's every word as he told the story of his capture (yet again). This was his seventh time telling the story, and there would likely be seven more before these Metropolis dolts sorted through the paperwork revoking his early release from Arkham and mandating his return to Gotham. Eddie didn't mind, for these Metropolis criminals (dimwits though they were) made an appreciative audience.

_"By second a southern redneck or a tasty snack,_" he continued, pausing to give the brighter ones a chance to put it together for themselves. "_By whole—_ and then, by friends, I pulled a firecracker frob by sleeve and hurled it into Superban's face. _'By whole,' I told hib, 'is quite an effective diversion!'"_

"You stopped Superman with an ordinary firecracker?" a Toyman henchman asked incredulously.

"It bite not be able to hurt hib, but it certainly is startling when you're not expecting it," Eddie explained.

There was a chorus of grunting agreement among his listeners.

"I still don't understand how he got welded inside a giant robot," a Prankster henchman confided.

"Shh, he'll get to it," his colleague whispered. "Now be quiet, I want to hear this part about the KINKY FRIEND SPOOF TUTOR. I think I almost got it figured out."

* * *

The cluster of listeners around Tim's sickbed wasn't as harmonious as that around Riddler's. Robin had been released from the hospital by mid-afternoon, but he couldn't exactly go home. The Iceberg fire was big news. Robin's involvement had also made the news, and there was no way Tim Drake could go back to the Brentwood dorms with the same kind of injuries Robin had suffered. It was agreed he would stay with Dick and Barbara for a few days. They just got him settled in when Cassie came over, still feeling bad she didn't know the fire extinguisher wasn't a weapon. It was unbearably awkward, and Tim tried to lighten the mood by resurrecting an old argument with Dick:

"See Bro, if I didn't have pants, those burns would've been third degree," he noted proudly.

"Maybe, but my costume had sex appeal," Dick said, looking at Barbara rather than Tim as he answered.

"So does your current costume," Barbara answered.

"Uhm, ew? Minor present?" Tim called, hoping they wouldn't be carrying on like this throughout his stay.

"Minor by which ID?" a wicked voice asked with a playful grin.

"Et tu, Cassie?"

* * *

© 2007, Chris Dee

-- — -- — -- -- — -- — -- -- — -- — --  
The Iceberg burned down? Oswald in Arkham?  
This can't be good for Gotham Nightlife.

And it might not be very good for Swiss banking either.

Next time in  
VAULT

-- — -- — --  
Chat with Chris Dee about this story on  
Tuesday, May 15  
Link on the Cat-Tales website and message board  
-- — -- — -- — -- — -- — -- — --


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